Vietnamese Lemongrass Rub, Herbs & Seasonings

Our Vietnamese Lemongrass Rub is a time-saving blend created to achieve East Asian flavors. It features lemongrass, basil, chiles and star anise with other spices.

All about Vietnamese Lemongrass Rub, Spice Blend

What it’s like, and how to make it

HeatMild

CuisineThai & southeast & asian

Best forGrill bbq, braising, quick weeknight, marinades rubs

Goes inSoups stews, noodles

WithPork, chicken, beef, fish seafood, duck fowl

What’s in itcoriander, star anise, paprika, onion powder, granulated garlic, lemongrass powder, cayenne pepper, sea salt, basil, chiles

How to use it

Vietnam in a rub. Mix with fish sauce and oil to marinate pork chops, chicken, or shrimp — let it sit for an hour, then grill or pan-fry. The lemongrass gives it that bright, citrusy lift over a warm star anise base. Also great stirred into pho broth, tossed with noodles, or rubbed on whole fish before roasting. The basil and coriander round it out. Mild heat with serious depth.

Weeknight ideas

pork

Vietnamese Lemongrass Rub spice, shown over a chalk-and-watercolour illustration

Illustration: Vietnamese Lemongrass Rub with Huế on the Perfume River

What’s in it

Every herb in the blend, and where to read about it on its own.

Spice · Caffeine-free

Coriander
Coriandrum sativum
The round, ridged seed of the same plant whose leaf is cilantro — and it tastes nothing like it. Where the leaf is green and divisive, the seed is warm, citrusy and floral, closer to orange peel than to anything herbal. That is why plenty...
Warm, citrusy and floral, a little sweet — orange peel and pepper together
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Spice · Caffeine-free

Paprika
Capsicum annuum
Dried sweet red peppers, ground. It is in twenty-eight products here mostly for colour and body — paprika gives a rub or a stew its red without adding heat, and it carries a soft, sweet pepper flavour that fills in the gaps between louder spices....
Sweet red pepper, no heat, vivid colour; the smoked one adds deep oak smoke
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Spice · Caffeine-free

Onion
Allium cepa
Dried onion, in three grinds: granulated blooms in oil, minced rehydrates into pieces you can see, and powder disappears into a dip or a rub. Twenty-seven products carry it. Drying takes 96 per cent of the water out and, with it, the sulfur compounds that...
Toasty, sweet and savoury; none of raw onion's sharpness
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Spice · Caffeine-free

Garlic
Allium sativum
A bulb, dried and broken down to three different coarsenesses, and the single most common ingredient in this catalogue — forty-three products carry it. Granulated is coarse and blooms slowly in hot oil; minced is visible pieces that plump up in a sauce; powder disappears...
Sweet, toasty and savoury; deeper and rounder than fresh garlic, without the raw bite
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Herb · Caffeine-free

Lemongrass
Cymbopogon citratus
A tropical grass with bright citrus flavor that hides genuine pharmacological activity. Citral — lemongrass's primary compound — relaxes smooth muscle through calcium channel antagonism, addressing the spastic component of digestive discomfort. The surprise: the tea's real bioactives are water-soluble polyphenols (caffeic acid at 20.81...
Bright, lemony, clean, slightly grassy, refreshing
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Salt · Caffeine-free

Sea Salt
Sodium chloride
Seawater, evaporated. It is in twenty-five products here, which understates it — salt is the ingredient that makes every other ingredient taste like itself. Fine sea salt dissolves on contact and is the everyday cooking salt: a teaspoon in a soup pot, half a teaspoon...
Clean salinity with nothing else in the way
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Spice · Caffeine-free

Chile
Capsicum annuum
Dried chile peppers, whole, crushed or ground — the generic heat in twenty-nine products here, from curry powders to jerk to Tex-Mex. Heat comes from capsaicin and is measured in Scoville heat units; the shop's blends name theirs where the supplier gives a figure. The...
Heat first, then a dry, fruity red-pepper taste; the darker dried chiles run raisiny and the lighter ones bright and tannic
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Spice · Caffeine-free

Star Anise
Illicium verum
An eight-pointed star, dried, from a tree of the hills of south China and northern Vietnam. It tastes of licorice because it is rich in anethole — the same compound that makes anise seed and fennel taste the way they do, though the three plants...
Licorice warmth, sweet and intense — the strongest of the anethole spices
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Spice · Caffeine-free

Cayenne
Capsicum annuum
Clean, direct heat with a dry, faintly fruity red-pepper taste behind it — the workhorse hot pepper of a North American kitchen. Standard cayenne runs 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville heat units; the shop's Mild is 40,000 and its Hot, which is actually a bird's eye...
Heat first, then a dry, slightly fruity red-pepper taste
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Herb · Caffeine-free

Basil
Ocimum basilicum
Sweet basil, dried — the pizza herb, and the one people are most surprised to find works dried at all. It does, but differently: drying takes the fresh leaf's bright anise-clove top note down and leaves something sweeter and more peppery underneath, which is why...
Sweet and peppery-green with a faint clove and anise note; softer dried than fresh
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Every ingredient in the shop →

What it goes with

Lemongrass and Darjeeling share geraniol — one of tea's most important aromatic compounds. Brew a cup alongside Vietnamese grilled pork or lemongrass chicken. For something bright and cleansing, our Ceylon's citrus character mirrors the lemongrass beautifully.

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