Star Anise Illicium verum
One star will flavour a whole pot. Two will make it taste of liquorice and nothing else, and you cannot take it back out once it has gone in.
Ingredient reference image: AI-generated. Recipe photography is my own.
In the kitchen
Whole, early, and out at the end
It needs liquid and time to release, so it goes in at the start of a braise, a stock or a syrup. Take it out before serving — a whole star in a bowl is unpleasant to bite and its points are sharp.
One star, not two
Star anise is among the most dominating spices in the rack. A single star seasons a large pot of pho or a whole braised pork belly. It builds as the dish sits, so under-dose and taste later.
It works in savoury braises
Western cooks file it under baking and mulled wine. In Chinese and Vietnamese cooking it is a savoury workhorse — red-braised pork, pho broth, five-spice, master stock — almost always with meat.
Beyond the kitchen
THE TAMIFLU CONNECTION
Shikimic acid, long a key starting material for the flu drug oseltamivir, was extracted primarily from star anise, and demand during avian and swine flu scares caused genuine global shortages and price spikes in the spice.
FIVE-SPICE
Star anise is the backbone of Chinese five-spice powder, generally with cassia, cloves, Sichuan pepper and fennel seed. The blend is ancient and the proportions vary by region and household.
A NARROW GROWING RANGE
Illicium verum is grown commercially in a small area of southern China, northern Vietnam and a few neighbouring regions. That concentration is why supply shocks move the price so sharply.
JAPANESE STAR ANISE IS TOXIC
Illicium anisatum, a related species, is genuinely poisonous and is used as incense in Japan, not as food. Contamination of culinary star anise with it has caused documented illness, which is why buying whole intact stars from a reputable source matters.
A longer history
Star anise has been used in southern China for well over a thousand years, in cooking and in traditional preparations, and moved along overland and maritime trade routes into Southeast Asia and eventually India. Its use in Chinese braising and in the five-spice blend is long established and thoroughly documented.
It reached Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through Russian overland trade and Dutch and English shipping, and was initially received as an exotic and expensive alternative to anise seed. European use concentrated on confectionery, liqueurs and mulled drinks rather than savoury cooking.
Its modern profile was reshaped by pharmaceuticals: for years it was the principal commercial source of shikimic acid, and flu pandemics repeatedly caused shortages in the spice trade. It remains a crop with unusually concentrated geography for something so widely consumed.