Five-spice powder () is a
spice mix
Spice mixes are blended spices or herbs. When a certain combination of herbs or spices is called for in a recipe, it is convenient to blend these ingredients beforehand. Blends such as chili powder, curry powder, herbes de Provence, garlic salt ...
ture of five or more spices used predominantly in almost
all branches of
Chinese cuisine
Chinese cuisine encompasses the numerous cuisines originating from China, as well as overseas cuisines created by the Chinese diaspora. Because of the Chinese diaspora and historical power of the country, Chinese cuisine has influenced many o ...
. It is also used in
Hawaiian cuisine
The cuisine of Hawaii incorporates five distinct styles of food, reflecting the diverse food history of settlement and immigration in the Hawaiian Islands.
In the pre-contact period of Ancient Hawaii (300 AD-1778), Polynesian voyagers brough ...
and
Vietnamese cuisine
Vietnamese cuisine encompasses the foods and beverages of Vietnam. Meals feature a combination of five fundamental tastes ( vi, ngũ vị, links=no, label=none): sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and spicy. The distinctive nature of each dish refle ...
.
The five flavors of the spices (sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and savory) refers to the five traditional Chinese elements.
Ingredients
![Five spices detailed](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Five_spices_detailed.jpg)
While there are many variants, a common mix is:
[Chinese Five Spice](_blank)
at The Epicentre
*
Star anise ()
*
Cloves ()
*
Chinese cinnamon ()
*
Sichuan pepper ()
*
Fennel
Fennel (''Foeniculum vulgare'') is a flowering plant species in the carrot family. It is a hardy, perennial herb with yellow flowers and feathery leaves. It is indigenous to the shores of the Mediterranean but has become widely naturalized ...
seeds ()
Other recipes may contain
anise seed,
ginger root
Ginger (''Zingiber officinale'') is a flowering plant whose rhizome, ginger root or ginger, is widely used as a spice and a folk medicine. It is a herbaceous perennial which grows annual pseudostems (false stems made of the rolled bases of l ...
,
nutmeg
Nutmeg is the seed or ground spice of several species of the genus ''Myristica''. ''Myristica fragrans'' (fragrant nutmeg or true nutmeg) is a dark-leaved evergreen tree cultivated for two spices derived from its fruit: nutmeg, from its seed, an ...
,
turmeric
Turmeric () is a flowering plant, ''Curcuma longa'' (), of the ginger family, Zingiberaceae, the rhizomes of which are used in cooking. The plant is a perennial, rhizomatous, herbaceous plant native to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast ...
, ''
Amomum villosum
''Wurfbainia villosa'', also known by its basionym ''Amomum villosum'', ( Chinese: ( Chinese: 砂仁; pinyin: shārén) is a plant in the ginger family that is grown throughout Southeast Asia and in South China. Similar to cardamom, the plant is ...
'' pods (), ''Amomum
cardamom
Cardamom (), sometimes cardamon or cardamum, is a spice made from the seeds of several plants in the genera ''Elettaria'' and ''Amomum'' in the family Zingiberaceae. Both genera are native to the Indian subcontinent and Indonesia. They are r ...
um'' pods (),
licorice
Liquorice (British English) or licorice (American English) ( ; also ) is the common name of ''Glycyrrhiza glabra'', a flowering plant of the bean family Fabaceae, from the root of which a sweet, aromatic flavouring can be extracted.
The liq ...
,
Mandarin orange
The mandarin orange (''Citrus reticulata''), also known as the mandarin or mandarine, is a small citrus tree fruit. Treated as a distinct species of orange, it is usually eaten plain or in fruit salads. Tangerines are a group of orange-colou ...
peel or
galangal
Galangal () is a common name for several tropical rhizomatous spices.
Differentiation
The word ''galangal'', or its variant ''galanga'' or archaically ''galingale'', can refer in common usage to the aromatic rhizome of any of four plant spec ...
.
In Southern China, ''
Cinnamomum loureiroi'' and Mandarin orange peel are commonly used as substitutes for ''
Cinnamomum cassia
''Cinnamomum cassia'', called Chinese cassia or Chinese cinnamon, is an evergreen tree originating in southern China, and widely cultivated there and elsewhere in South and Southeast Asia (India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam) ...
'' and cloves respectively. These ingredients collectively produce southern five-spice powders' distinctive, slightly different flavor profile. In one study, the potential antioxidant capacities of Chinese five-spice powder (consisting of Szechuan pepper, fennel seed, cinnamon, star anise, and clove) with varying proportion of individual spice ingredients was investigated through four standard methods. The results suggest that clove is the major contributor to the high antioxidant capacities of the five-spice powder whereas the other four ingredients contribute to the flavor.
Use
Five spice may be used with fatty meats such as pork, duck or goose. It is used as a
spice rub
Spice rub is any mixture of ground spices that is made to be rubbed on raw food before the food is cooked. The spice rub forms a coating on the food. The food can be marinated in the spice rub for some time for the flavors to incorporate int ...
for chicken, duck, pork and seafood, in
red cooking
Red cooking, also called Chinese stewing, red stewing, red braising, or flavor potting, is a slow braising Chinese cooking technique that imparts a reddish-brown coloration to the prepared food.
There are two types of red cooking:
*Hongshao ...
recipes, or added to the breading for fried foods.
Five spice is used in recipes for
Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding ar ...
roasted duck, as well as beef stew. It is used as a marinade for Vietnamese broiled chicken. The five-spice powder mixture has followed the
Chinese diaspora
Overseas Chinese () refers to people of Chinese birth or ethnicity who reside outside Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese.
Terminology
() or ''Hoan-kheh'' () in Hokkien, re ...
and has been incorporated into other national cuisines throughout Asia.
In
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state ...
, some restaurants place a shaker of the spice on each patron's table. A
seasoned salt
Seasoned salt is a blend of table salt, herbs, spices, other flavourings, and sometimes monosodium glutamate (MSG). It is sold in supermarkets and is commonly used in fish and chip shops and other take-away food shops. Seasoned salt is often th ...
can be easily made by dry-roasting common
salt
Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quant ...
with five-spice powder under low heat in a dry pan until the spice and salt are well mixed.
Five-spice powder can also add complexity and savoriness to sweets and savory dishes alike. It has a traditional use as an antiseptic and used to cure indigestion.
See also
*
*
List of culinary herbs and spices
This is a list of culinary herbs and spices. Specifically these are food or drink additives of mostly botanical origin used in nutritionally insignificant quantities for flavoring or coloring.
This list does not contain fictional plants such a ...
*
Ngo hiang
Ngo hiang (), also known as heh gerng () lor bak () or kikiam () is a unique Hokkien and Teochew dish widely adopted in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand; in addition to its place of origin in southern China.
It is ...
*
Panch phoron
Panch phoron, Panch Phodan or Pancha Phutana is a whole spice blend, originating from the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent and used especially in the cuisine of Eastern India and Northeastern India, especially in the cuisine of Bhojpur ...
*
Shichimi
, also known as or simply ''shichimi'', is a common Japanese spice mixture containing seven ingredients. Tōgarashi is the Japanese name for ''Capsicum annuum'', a red pepper native to Central and South America, and it is this ingredient tha ...
References
{{Cantonese cuisine
Cantonese cuisine
Hawaiian cuisine
Herb and spice mixtures
Powders