Anise and licorice are two famous spices in a lot of recipes. You can not miss them to raise your hot pot or soups to the next deliciousness level and provide you with many nutrients.
Because of some similarities, you may fail to identify anise and licorice during cooking time, and the mistake can sometimes make your recipes not attain the best taste you expect.
This post below will let you know how they are similar and different and some tips to identify anise and licorice when you consider some aspects like taste, strength, accompaniments, or processed products.
Anise Vs. Licorice – Don’t Confuse Them With Each Other
Anise and licorice are two distinctive things with some similar points and also distinguishing characteristics.
Anise and licorice have some common produced forms, aroma, and even some remarkable benefits to your cooking and health. Besides, among these aspects, you will recognize some different characteristics to make them totally separate.
Let’s Take A Look At Anise And Licorice
If you want to know anything about anise and licorice, read the passages below to grasp anise and licorice better.
Anise – A Captivating Aromatic Spice
This is all information about anise that sometimes makes you confused in using and recognize it with other spices like licorice.
As you know, anise is just a type of plant with its seeds used as outstanding spices in the culinary field. Some of you may be also confused about aniseed and star anise, but actually, the names don’t indicate the connections between them.
Anise, or aniseed, is small and brown, while the star anise has a star shape. Despite different appearances, the aniseed and star anise are so alike that aniseed can be considered one of the replacements of star anise. It’s because they have similar flavors.
Anise is native to the Eastern Mediterranean and Southwest Asia and belongs to the Apiaceae family with long, thin, and green stems. The white flowers become seeds for flavor, raising the flavors of almost all most recipes.
In terms of appearance, the anise is brown and looks like fennel seeds, however, sometimes they are mistaken with fennel seeds, but actually, anise seeds are much smaller.
Anise seeds own a very tangy aroma, making them an indispensable seasoning in bettering your recipes and eliminating strange smells from raw meat.
Importantly, what you need to know is that anise can provide you with a sense of sweetness, making it an important spice in cooking. A fantastic stand-in for tarragon due to their somewhat similar flavor profile, anise goes best with sweet and savory recipes.
Remarkable Uses Of Anise?
The anise seeds get involved in many recipes from savories, beverages, and even medicine thanks to the aroma and nutritional components that they can bring to your recipes and your health.
Culinary Field
The anise seed can be added to the dough of baked goods, fruits for pies. You can also use them when preparing ground beef for your meal. And the anise is considered to go well with goat cheese, seafood, and especially meat.
Besides, anise is a good accompaniment of citrus fruits, coconut, and melon when it comes to fruit pairing.
In addition to using anise seeds as spices, the anise also provides your leaves to make tea, one of the oldest tea in the world with traditional making methods.
Moreover, you can also use the anise to add appealing flavors to alcohol. For example, in absinthe, sometimes people use anise as a nice alternative to allspice. Furthermore, the anise also plays a significant role as flavorings of root beer.
Try making bread with anise for your children as a wonderful snack. Watch this video:
Medicine
Anise is often used to remedy some ailments concerning upset stomach, a runny nose, cough, asthma, and bronchitis.
Anise seeds will help to remedy some ailments for you. Watch this video to know:
The Health Benefits Of Anise?
Anise is multipurpose because it can offer you a lot of positive effects on your health. And these are some nutritional values from anise you must know about anise.
I would say that anise seed is a good spice when it is a rich source of minerals such as iron, manganese, and calcium (1) that aid in preserving a lot of crucial functions in your body related to the immune system and body temperature regulation.
Besides, the anise is also considered an excellent seed to reduce stomach acid secretion and prevent your stomach from being ulcer formation.
Licorice – Mild Taste, Magical Uses
This section will show you basic to specific information about licorice, one of the closest flavoring agents of anise.
Licorice originated from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East region, but now it is also planted around the Mediterranean and some parts of the United States.
Licorice has the scientific name glycyrrhiza glabra, which is a perennial herb of the pea family, especially famous for flavoring, great for confection and folk medicine.
Like anise, the licorice can also be used in the cooking and medical field. It offers a wide range of benefits as flavorings, colorants, and medicine to reduce some ailments.
Regarding flavors, the licorice will bring you natural sweetness but slight bitterness, making it very similar to anise.
There are five main forms of licorice you often use for cooking and other aspects. They are powdered licorice, capsules, tinctures, topical gels, and teas.
How Is Licorice Beneficial To Your Life?
Having existed in five different forms, licorice is a must-have spice and ingredient in your kitchen and gets involved in many dishes of meals. Now let’s see how it works.
Cooking Spices
Thanks to its sweetness, it’s understandable that licorice extract is very often used to make desserts. For example, Canada has an iconic dessert using licorice. This extract also appears in tea.
However, if you don’t have the extract, using licorice compound or powder is also good for your bakes to create sweetness.
Besides, licorice powder and licorice compounds can be used to marinate a lot of recipes related to meat.
You might have heard about black and red licorice, but actually, they’re yummy candies for your kids. Black licorice also contains licorice extract, but the red one doesn’t. They’re not species of licorice and even cannot be used to add a sweet flavor to your dishes.
Homemade black licorice must be what your children love. Watch this video to know how to make liquorice:
Medicine
Licorice powder made with the root is a common medicine to treat some ailments like heartburn, acid reflux, cough, and hot flashes.
Health Benefits Of Using Licorice In Your Recipes
Like many other ingredients in the world, licorice contains numerous nutrients for your body and can contribute to the daily nutrient consumption for your health.
Containing glycyrrhizin, licoricidin, and liquiritin, the licorice is good to fight bacteria, making it a great thing to prevent tooth decay (2).
Besides, the presence of glycyrrhizin makes licorice a very good spice for hepatitis C that mainly causes inflammation and liver damage.
Brewing a cup of licorice root tea is a simple way to enjoy its great medical properties. Watch this video:
The Noble Similarities And Difference Between Anise And Licorice
You don’t need to wait anymore; this section will show you all the similar and different things between anise and licorice when it comes to origin, flavor, forms, and benefits.
Anise And Licorice Have Some Commons In Many Aspects…
Similar points are what makes you often confused in distinguishing what anise and licorice are. And these are what you know about them.
The most significant similarity between anise and licorice must be the aroma when they always bring you the flavor that is like candies.
The second thing that makes you mistaken in identifying these two spices is their manufactured forms. The anise and licorice powder are somehow similar in color, making you sometimes fail to recognize them.
The last similar characteristic is about benefits. Both licorice and anise bring you good effects on cooking, medicine, and even health benefits. You can use anise and licorice to flavor a lot of main recipes, bakes, tea and treat a variety of minor illnesses.
… But They Are Surely Different
Being two distinctive ingredients, anise and licorice must have different aspects that help you know what they are.
Between the two ingredients of licorice and anise, the remarkable difference comes from five aspects of the botanical property, taste, strength, what they pair well with, and processed products.
Regarding botanical features, you can easily realize that anise belongs to the parsley family, and their fruit is the main harvested part. On the contrary, licorice comes from the bean family, and people collect their roots mainly.
In another perspective, anise and licorice have natural sweetness, but licorice also has bitterness when you taste; thus, just taste to know if you are confused about these two things.
Furthermore, the anise gets a stronger flavor than licorice. For this reason, sometimes it is not my favorite smell.
How about their accompaniments? While anise is perfect to go with citrus fruits, mint, or pineapple, licorice is the best match for mint, ginger, and raspberries.
One more thing making licorice and anise different is the forms they are processed. Anise is often offered in four primary forms: powder, seeds, oil, and extract, whereas licorice usually exists in five different states: powder, tinctures, capsules, topical gels, and teas.
Incredible Recipes With Anise And Licorice For Your Meals
You’ve got to know what anise and licorice are, and now it’s time for you to discover some magic dishes for your wonderful meals.
1. Italian Anise Cookies
The Italian anise cookies are one of the best ideas to treat your family members on Christmas day or Easter because the cookies are soft, puffy, and sweet with a hard glaze on the top.
Making the cookies doesn’t require a lot of time and effort like many other cakes; thus, you can let your children enjoy cooking with you when they have free time.
Anise cookies are perfect to end your wonderful parties. Watch this video to know:
2. Olive Oil- Anise Pound Cakes
Pound cakes with anise and butter flavor will be your family’s favorite dessert that you can make with a simple baking pan. Besides, the soft and dense pound cakes seem to be the simplest and well-known cakes for big parties as you can save a lot of time preparing them.
The addition of anise seeds will add natural sweetness to your cakes, which is good for your health.
By the side of fruit sauces, jam, ice cream, or nuts, the cake becomes more and more delicious and appealing.
3. Black Licorice Syrup
Licorice syrup which is sweet, dark, and smoky is combined with milkshakes, coffee, or cocktail to create very fabolous drinks for your duty-free days.
Besides, you can also drizzle the syrup over chocolate cake or brownies to enhance the flavors of the cakes and form a perfect ending touch for your meals.
FAQs
Below are some common questions related to both anise and licorice; thus, if you are curious about these flavorings, read this section to grasp them better.
Some Additional Tips For Preserving Anise And Licorice
Although anise and licorice are great spices, their aroma will disappear quickly if you don’t use them very often or store them in the appropriate ways. And now, I’ll give you some basic tips to preserve your anise and licorice.
You had better use an airtight container to store anise and then put it in cool and dark places like a cupboard or pantry for more extended longevity. With this method, the anise can last for six months.
How about licorice? Using airtight plastic storage or a jar with a tight-fitting lid is also the best method.
So, you’ve learned a lot of information about anise and licorice, from general to detailed knowledge and from similar to different points. If you have questions or anything related to comparing anise and licorice, feel free to share them with me in the comment section.
References
- 7 Health Benefits and Uses of Anise Seed. (2021). Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/anise
- Medicalnewstoday.com. 2021. Benefits of licorice root: Uses, side effects, and more.
