5 spice is traditional in Chinese cooking, but its not as widely used as people think, how ever, there are a few iconic Chinese dishes that cannot be made with out it, such as Chinese BBQ spare ribs, Yuk Sung and in most cases, Chinese Roast Pork (Char Siu if cooked over a flame).
5 Spice has many variation and not every blend has the same 5 ingredients (The full list of mix and match ingredients will be available for Gold members), but here is a blend that's more traditional but still works amazing for Chinese takeaway cooking, its smells very similar to Chi - Click here to sign up to gold membership
Ingredients
20g Star Anise - https://www.chinandchoo.com/product-page/star-anise-50g
25g Cassia bark - https://www.chinandchoo.com/product-page/heera-cinnamon-bark-200g
10g Fennel
5g Sand Ginger (no this isn't the same as ginger, if you can't find it just leave it out)
Method
Place you cloves, star anise, cassia bark and fennel into a fry frying pan, and turn to a medium heat.
Toast the spices, stirring every 20 to 30 seconds, until you can start to smell the aromas of the ingredients, this should take 2-3 minutes, try not to burn them, if they go over if you burn them you'll have to start all over again.
When the spices are nicely toasted take them out the pan and place them on to a baking tray and spread them out.
All them to cool to room temp.
When the spices are cool, place them into a coffee bean blender, or a very powerful blender, you need something powerful in order to get the spices fine enough, if you can't your 5 spice mix will be grainy.
Place all you ingredients into the coffee grind and blitz until its a fine powder, depending on the size of your grinder, you may have to do this a few times.
When the powder is fine, add your sand ginger and mix in, it can than be stored in an air tight container until ready to be used.
This should last 3-5 months
Note: The toasting makes the spices more brittle so they blend finer much more easily.
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