[Sca-cooks] Burdock Roots

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Elizabeth/Betty Cook wrote:
>Are burdock roots commercially
>available? (I know you can find them growing wild in many parts of
>the country, but I haven't seen them around here--West Kingdom.)

Absolutely available in the US and very available in California.

You can find them easily wherever fresh produce is sold that is
oriented to Japanese folks (oops, pun not intended). The Japanese
name is gobo. I find them at the Berkeley Bowl regularly and IIRC
they are labeled burdock root. I wouldn't say it's worth the trip to
Berkeley from San Jose just for burdock root, though if you're here
for other reasons, or coming to the Berkeley Bowl on a general
unusual produce trip, look for it.

Burdock root also feature prominently in Macrobiotic cuisine. I don't
know if anyone is still into it, but back in the late 1960s i was
introduced to Macrobiotics by some Beat poets i was living with (yes,
really, not wannabees) who also went to the Zendo every morning
around 5 AM.

I began cooking with burdock root fairly regularly at that point,
although that started me reading about nutrition and i quit
Macrobiotics once i was living in my own place. Be that as it may,
some health food stores could well have burdock root, too. I don't
recall seeing them in Whole Foods (and i know there's one not far
from you), but they could well have burdock/gobo.

It's very long, very skinny, dark brown to blackish on the outside,
has a bitter, rooty, woody smell. It's rather hard - i cut it into
shavings with a paring knife. The flavor is similar to, but milder
than the smell. The inside color is sort of greige-y off-white.

Anahita