Ingredient: Star anise
Category: Herbs, Spices & Seasoning
Season: All
Star anise, star aniseed, badiane or Chinese star anise, (Chinese: pinyin: bājiǎo, lit. "eight-horn") is a spice that closely resembles anise in flavour, obtained from the star-shaped pericarp of Illicium verum, a small native evergreen tree of southwest China.
The star shaped fruits are harvested just before ripening.
It is widely used in Chinese cuisine, in Indian cuisine where it is a major component of garam masala, and in Malay/Indonesian cuisine.
It is widely grown for commercial use in China, India, and most other countries in Asia.
Star anise is an ingredient of the traditional five-spice powder of Chinese cooking.
It is one of the ingredients used to make the broth for the Vietnamese noodle soup, called phở.
It is used as a spice in preparation of Biryani in Andhra Pradesh, a south Indian State.
Star anise contains anethole , the same ingredient which gives the unrelated anise its flavour.
Recently, star anise has come into use in the West, as a less expensive substitute for anise in baking .
It is used in liquor production , most distinctively in the production of the liquor Galliano, it is also used in the production of Sambuca and pastis.
The star shape is the pod and the tiny seeds nestle inside each star petal.
It is usually used whole, like cardamom pods, and always looks very pretty.
Its flavour faintly resembles aniseed, with warm, spicy overtones.
Japanese star anise (Illicium anisatum), a similar tree, is not edible because it is highly toxic; instead, it has been burned as incense in Japan. |