This Chinese Five Spice Powder is really worth making your own. It is best to make it fresh, as and when you need it. I use a coffee grinder as my spice grinder as it works brilliantly. Just remember, if you grind spices in it, you cannot use it for coffee.
Chinese Five Spice Powder
Ingredients
- 5 star anise
- 15 mls fennel seeds
- 15 mls Sichuan peppercorns
- 10 mls cloves
- 10 mls ground cinnamon
Method
- place the spices in a dry frying pan and heat gently
- remove from the heat when you can smell the spices
- grind to a fine powder
- pass through a fine sieve to remove the husks
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How to use this Chinese Five Spice Powder
This spice blend is the perfect foil for fatty meats such as pork, duck or goose. It can be used as a spice rub for chicken, duck, pork and seafood. Add some to the flour you use before breading, or to the crumbs themselves. This spice blend is commonly used in Cantonese recipes for roast duck and beef stew. And when making Vietnamese chicken dishes you can add this to the marinade. You will find this Chinese spice blend all over the world due to immigration. Expect to see it in Hawaii on tables in place of salt. Or add it to salt to make a unique seasoned salt by dry toasting the ingredients together over a low temperature until you can smell the spices. Be bold and add this to your desserts to add a touch of savouriness.
Thanks for this 🙂
it is the first of my new herb / spice posts that will be making an appearance on a Wednesday 🙂
I can almost smell the wonderful aromoas from here. 😉
🙂 Mandy
it is such a nice blend and was a wow factor with my stir fry the other night 🙂
This is so easy – thanks!
my pleasure 🙂
hi please tell me in where do you use this spice in just wondering if i can use it to make milk tea with it . what about cakes.thanks. hope to hear from you soon.
hi, I have never used this in sweet dishes – I use it for stir fry’s and as a rub for pork. Give it a try and let me know 🙂
This is great! This way I can use a little less anise than what the purchased spice mixes always taste like to me. Anise heavy!
I much prefer to make my own blends so if I don’t like a particular spice I can use less of it 🙂