Chinese Five Spice

About 1 tbsp

One week I got it in my head that I wanted to make baked pork buns. The delicious pork in the filling, char siu, was a recipe from Joshua Weissman. Sadly, the grocery store aisles had no Chinese five spice that the marinade requires. So I went hunting for a homemade recipe for the powder. This is the scaled-back, simple version I arrived at after viewing several variants that made gigantic amounts of the fragrant blend.

• 2 g star anise pod (1 large pod)
• 2 g fennel seed
• 1 g black peppercorns
• 0.5 g whole clove (about 6)
• 2 g cinnamon (I had ground on hand)