Dishes with Star Anise are the national cuisine of many countries. In Germany, it is added to minced sausages, in some regions of Italy – to tomato sauces.

It gives the dishes a sweetish flavor and a slight sweet aftertaste. Do not forget about the useful properties of anise, making food with its addition, to some extent, curative. As for other spices, it is well combined with coriander, dill, fennel, laurel leaf, cumin.

How to Use Star Anise

Meat. Anis, cinnamon and a laurel leaf sprinkled before the jelly and other lavish dishes. You can also cook meat with anise (especially tasty beef). It goes well with fish and seafood.

Soups. Also spice with pleasure spices soups.

Vegetables. Cutted greens can be safely used in vegetable (with cabbage (including sauerkraut), carrots, beets) salads and fruit assorted. This makes it possible to preserve the useful properties of this remarkable spice.

Sauces. Together with garlic, dill and fennel it can be used to make sour cream sauce, which is served, for example, with cooked potatoes. Such food will also undoubtedly be useful for the digestive system.

Bakery products. Fruits and oil are used for flavoring bakery, confectionery. In cooking, there are many baking recipes with anise. For example, biscuits, cookies, pies, cakes, pancakes, cakes are baked with it, put in mousses and jelly, in various pastes. Anise fits well with fruit.

Porridge. It is especially good to add this spice to oatmeal or rice.

It is also used for cooking drinks, cheese starter, marinade for tomato, pickling cucumbers, cabbage sauerkraut.

Alcoholic beverages
In the past, when spices with generosity were added to alcoholic beverages (although at that time – to soften the taste of rough, “unfiltered” alcohols), it gained popularity as one of the most frequent aromatic additives. Anise vodka is a very famous beverage, which, according to the experts, has medicinal properties. Spice is also added to beverages such as ricar, pastis, pernod. Without anise, the recipe for the famous absinthe did not. He also enters into the sows of anizetts, ouzo,  Arak (drink), sambuca and many others, giving them a unique aroma and flavor.

Interesting Facts
The composition of an anise common includes a lot of essential oils, B and C vitamins, fatty acids and minerals. It is this rich composition that makes it possible to use anise not only in cooking, but also for medicinal purposes.

Image credit: Ajale