Gobomaki (rolled dish with a burdock root) (ごぼう巻き)
Gobomaki is a dish using gobo (burdock root). It may be cooked in a wide variety of ways.
Nikumaki (meat roll with a burdock root)
It is a dish in which burdock root, boiled beforehand, is wrapped with thinly sliced meat such as beef and pork, broiled in a frying pan, dressed with seasonings like soy sauce, sugar, and so on. It has often been made as an osechi food (special dish prepared for the New Year) in place of gobo no nishime (burdock root cooked almost to dryness in soy sauce and water) in recent years. It is also used as a side dish for a boxed lunch.
Fish-paste Product
As a boiled fish-paste product, it may refer to burdock root that is wrapped in minced fish and is fried in oil. It is a type of Satsuma-age (fried fish cake), often called 'goboten,' meaning tenpura (Japanese deep-fried dish) of burdock root. It is often used as an ingredient for oden (a Japanese dish containing all kinds of ingredients cooked in a special broth of soy sauce, sugar, sake, and so on).
Delicacy
Some are made with fish such as eso (lizardfish) and guchi (white croaker) which are made into kamaboko (boiled fish paste). It is served in teriyaki style in which fish is cut into fillets and its skin, without the meat, is dipped in tare (sauce made with soy sauce, sake, and other seasonings) and wrapped around a piece of burdock root, sometimes with its minced fish wrapped under the skin. Originally born out of a reused by-product of kamaboko, it is now often appreciated as a delicacy, as kamaboko has been increasingly made from frozen minced fish.
It is famously produced in Kinan or Nanki, Wakayama Prefecture including Tanabe City and Chohoku region, Yamaguchi Prefecture including Hagi City. It has become a stable in osechi in both of these regions.
There is also gobo wrapped in unagi (eel), which is rarely called 'umaki,' though umaki originally referred to a rolled omelet with broiled unagi as a core.