Homemade Chinese five spice powder with star anise, cloves, Sichuan peppercorn, fennel seeds and cinnamon.
Recently, I get readers ask about how to choose five spice powder. She is complaining about the too strong cinnamon taste in store bought version. Honestly I did not know which brand to recommend because in most case, I use my homemade version.
Seeing the name, the first impression is that this mixture contains five types of spicy materials. Basically five spice powder is mainly used in braised dishes or roasted meat especially pork, beef or fish.
The five basic ingredients for Chinese five spice powder are star aniseed (大料), fennel seeds(小茴香), cloves(丁香), Sichuan peppercorn(花椒) and cinnamon(肉桂). Based on the five basic ingredients, other spices might also be added due to different recipes. In fact, there are more than 13 common Chinese spices used in Chinese dishes. You can adjust the amount according to the basic ratio or change certain some ingredients accordingly. For example, if you certainly reduce the amount of cinnamon if you do not strong cinnamon taste since it might cause some bitterness. That’s why I am always trying to make homemade version sauces, spices and seasonings. We will have control of almost everything.
Health tip: Five-spice powder combines the advantages of various spice and an appreciate amount can help to improve body immunity. However pregnant woman should not eat too much and avoid it in early pregnancy.
Then, let’s find how to use five spice powder.
1. Use it in fillings of dumplings
2. Use it on roasted recipes:
3. Use in pancakes
Zucchini Pancakes Chinese Style
4. Use it in stir fry recipes
- 20 g Sichuan Peppercorn
- 20 g star anise
- 10 g fennel seeds
- 10 g cinnamon or cinnamon powder
- 8 g cloves
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Break cinnamon and star anise. And then put the two ingredients in your grinder to ground them to powder.
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Mix with other ingredients and continue grind until all the ingredients are well grounded.
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Filter large particles out; and keep the filtered ground powder mixture in airtighter container until use.
Since the five spice powder has a strong taste, spare it and do not use too much each time.
Do not throw away the large particles, you can use them in stewing recipes.
Wow! I have been looking for an authentic chinese cuisine easy to ready to enjoy the cooking cook page for quite some time. This is classic straight forward and full of passages to basics, sauces, and traditional cooking. Thanks to you I have re- engaged with the art of cooking.
Catherine,
Thank you Catherine for such a lovely comment.
Thank you so much for using metric! made it so much easier to measure. This is my first batch and it came out well – I dry rubbed it onto a whole chicken and roasted.
I’ll be back to your website!
Five spice chicken is so good, David! Happy cooking!
I haven’t used this yet was I did taste it and it’s fantastic. And it’s so aromatic. It made way more than I need so next time I would halve the recipe. Can’t wait to try it in a dish.
It presents aromatic and lovely flavor in dough especially. Happy cooking!
Would roasting the spices before grinding improve the flavors?
Absolutely yes!