Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Star Anise along with all the Star Anise containing recipes presented on this site, with 104 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 Star Anise recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Star Anise as a major wild food ingredient.

Star Anise is the star-shaped pericarp of llicium verum, a small native evergreen tree of southwest China. The fruit is bourne by a small evergreen tree native to southwestern China. 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 name). It forms on of the key components of Chinese five spice. It 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 quisine and it is used in some South Asia and Indonesia recipes (though to a lesser extent).



Star anise contains anethole (which is also the flavour ingredient of anise) and it is sometimes used in western cooking as a cheaper alternative to anise. 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.