● Oura Burdock
About 10 boxes of burdocks, or about 80 burdocks, are used. They are large burdocks with a hollow inside, like Umeda burdocks, and are grown in Saitama and Ibaraki. The burdocks are washed with a scrubbing brush to remove the dirt. In order to prevent metal reactions, the mud and other things inside are scraped off finely with a bamboo skewer. The bamboo skewers are interesting. Asia is a bamboo culture. Chopsticks are also made of bamboo, and baskets are also made of bamboo. The good thing about bamboo is that if you don't cut it, it will grow in a year, so you have to thin it out, and even if you use a lot of it, it doesn't disrupt the natural cycle, so it doesn't cause much environmental damage. A single bamboo can be used for various purposes.

After cleaning the burdock, cut it, but you can't cut it haphazardly. You have to be careful because the knives we normally use are single-edged and will break. That's why we use a double-edged knife that is as thin as possible. And cut straight, not at an angle. You can tell by the sound when cutting, but if the knife goes in at an angle, the corners will crack slightly, which will cause the dish to fall apart and look bad. In order not to break the corners, if a corner does break, you should chamfer it a little neatly. Also, since it is cooked upright, you can't cut it too long. The knife should be cut to the height of the pot, with as little waste as possible. If you cook it side by side, it will fall apart, so it is cooked upright, but a normal pot won't fit very much, so we use a Western-style pot with a flat bottom, which is used for French cuisine.

The cut burdock is soaked in rice bran to remove the bitterness. The burdock is lined up vertically, and the thin parts of the burdock are inserted into the gaps to flatten it out in the pot. This is done every year, but by cutting them to that length, the number of burdocks (for how many houses) will be in the tiered box is decided. First, the first layer is lined up, and then the bran is evenly sprinkled on all of them, and then the second layer is lined up. They float when boiling, but since about 80 burdocks are divided into two pots, in order to make the two pots the same amount, the volume of the burdock, the amount of bran, and the amount of water are the same, and the burdock is lined up tightly. Also, the cut surface of the burdock is decided once so as not to damage it when boiling. First, only the larger parts are roughly placed, and then the gaps are filled in by placing the thin parts upside down, like a puzzle, and then boiled.

It depends on the thickness of the burdock, the place of origin, the season, and the quality of the burdock that year, but it takes at least four days, usually about a week, until it is soft enough to be pierced with a skewer. The burdock this time is a little thicker than usual. If it is not completely soaked at this point, it will get harder and harder when you add sugar, so even if you put it out quickly here, it will take longer the next time. During this time, the water will turn black in a day, so you have to change the bran. Ideally, you would like to change it every day, but it takes more than two hours just to change the bran. To add new water and bran, tilt the pot, pour water in with a hose, and rotate it to wash away the dirty water and bran. Leave it in water for about an hour and a half until the dirty water inside has been removed to a certain extent and the water becomes clear. It depends on how well the bitterness has been removed, but I usually change the bran about once every two days, but if I change it too often the burdock's aroma will disappear, so I change the bran about three times. My father told me that the finished product, or the guideline for firmness, should first be as soft as tofu. Once it's as soft as tofu, I gently remove the bran and put it in the pot, then add sugar to make it the same firmness as burdock. It's fine if the finished product has the same firmness as normally boiled burdock... Since a considerable amount of sugar is added, if you don't rehydrate it until it's as soft as tofu, the flavor won't be fully absorbed and the burdock will become hard and the core will remain.

Once it has softened, the bran is then carefully removed by soaking it in water. If bamboo skewers are used as is, the burdock will fall apart, so we use old bamboo skewers that have been softened further with a wooden mallet. The bran stuck in the holes of the burdock can be removed by blowing gently into the holes. If any bran remains, it can cause the burdock to rot, but since the inside of the holes of the burdock is quite soft, if running water is applied directly to it, it will crumble and fall out in pieces. Therefore, the only way to remove it is to fill the burdock with water and let it dance around. It is a tricky job.

Next, place the ingredients in a pot with a strainer on top and simmer. In the photo it looks like they're packed in tightly, but don't pack them in too tightly, leaving some space between them (just like with konbumaki). Also, the cooking rate is different at the edge of the pot and in the middle, so they will cook to completely different degrees, so arrange them according to their softness and size, placing soft ingredients near the edge of the pot and hard ingredients in the middle, and so on, deciding where to place them.

First, pour in just enough sauce to cover the ingredients, then boil it down, and when there isn't enough soup, add a little more, taste it, and then pull out the strainer, and rotate the pot again depending on the heat, so you definitely need a strainer for that purpose. It's always done diligently by about two people, with one person taking turns all day long.

Heat it until it boils, then remove it from the fire as soon as it boils, then heat it again when it has cooled. Repeat this process. The way you heat it depends on how many days you want it to keep. You also add sugar, but you can't add it all at once because you don't want to ruin the flavor of the burdock. You add it gradually over time. It's like prescribing medicine to treat an illness; no matter how effective it is, you can't just add it all at once. Just like medicine, seasonings need to be handled with care. Also, when you put something in the pot, you have to think of it as a baby. If you're not gentle, it will break. When you put something in a pot or whatever, think of it as a cradle and handle it carefully. That way it won't break.

The most important part of the burdock process is rehydrating it, but even more so is the positioning of the pot when cooking. Once you've set it, it can't be changed, and the amount of sugar you cut (add) at the beginning is also important. To tighten it to a certain extent, you need to cut an appropriate amount at the beginning, but conversely, if you cut too much, it will tighten too quickly and the flavor won't penetrate to the inside. The point is, it varies every year depending on the quality of the burdock and how well it's rehydrated, so it's difficult to say exactly how many grams it should be. You need experience from trying it a few times. We keep data every year, but even if the amount of sugar we use is the same in the end, the amount we cut at the beginning varies from year to year.