Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Spice guide to Star Anise along with all the Star Anise containing recipes presented on this site, with 136 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the spice-based recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Star Anise as a major flavouring.

Star Anise is the star-shaped pericarp (the outer part of a fruit, excluding the seeds) of llicium verum, a small native evergreen tree of southwest China (also known as Chinese star anise, Indian anise, Badian anise [is is known as bājiǎo, 八角, literally 'eight-corners' in Mandarin). The fruit is borne by a small evergreen tree that is believed to be native to southwestern China ad which is a member of the Schisandraceae family of flowering plants. The plant is grown in Southern China and Vietnam, but has been brought into cultivation and is no longer known in the wild state. The star-shaped fruit are harvested just before ripening (and thus still contain their seeds). The dried fruit resembles an eight-pointed star and has a flavour that closely resembles that of anise (hence the English and Chinese names). It forms on of the key components of Chinese five spice powder and is also one of the ingredients used to make the broth for the Vietnamese noodle soup called phở. Star anise is widely used in Chinese cuisine and it is used in some South Asia and Indonesia recipes (though to a lesser extent).

Star anise contains anethole as the main aromatic constituent of its essential oil (which is also the flavour ingredient of anise seed) and it is sometimes used in Western cooking as a cheaper alternative to anise (it can be distinguished from aniseed by the presence of traces of 1,4 cineol in the essential oil). Interestingly, star anise is now the main source of the chemical compound shikimic acid (extracted from the seeds), a primary ingredient used to create the anti-flu drug Tamiflu, which is regarded as the most promising drug to mitigate the severity of bird flu (H5N1); though there is evidence that some strains of bird flue have already developed resistance against this drug.

The archaic English name of badian anise, which is used in some historic recipes, is actually derived from the Persian name of star anise, badiyan [بادیان], which may itself be a corruption of the Chinese, bājiǎo. Star anise is used in almost all the traditional cuisines of China, but elsewhere it is favoured only in the cookery of north Vinetnam, though it is occasionally used in Iranian, Pakistani and Northern Indian dishes. It is also added to the garam masala spice blend of the Kerala province of southern India.