Cycle 14 – Item

 2 (Tue) January 2024

 Kinpira Gobo Maki

2.5

by me

at home

-Changgok, Sujeong, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea-

with W and IZ

Kinpira is a Japanese cooking technique.  The name derives from a Japanese folk hero.  Typically applied to root vegetables, which are sliced into matchsticks then braised in soy sauce + mirin + sugar until tender.  Usually served as a side dish with steamed rice.  One popular version involves gobo (burdock root) – referred to in Korean as “wueong (우엉) and commonly found in gim bap.

With leftover ingredients from a weekend batch of ddoddo gim bap (see generally 14.318 Ddoddo Gim Bap), I made a simple Japanese-style maki.  Can’t recall if I’ve ever encountered sushi with only kinpira gobo, but it would seem to fall neatly in the family of one-component rolls, such as tekka maki, kapa maki, shiso maki, oshinko maki.  I did recently have a Korean gim bap featuring wueong (see 14.340 Wueong Mari).

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)