This Beef Stir Fry with Honey Pepper Sauce post was last updated in 2022.
A Beef Stir Fry to die for! A tender beef strip with a sticky sauce Stir-fry sauce with honey and black pepperThis is one of my favorite dishes in a Chinese restaurant. This is a great dish! Fastest stir fry recipe you make all year – 1 minute to cook the beef, 1 minute to make the sauce. And you’re DONE!
Beef Stir Fry With Honey Pepper Sauce
Chinese Beef with Honey Black Pepper Sauce and Chinese Beef is my favorite dish that I order from Chinese restaurants. Never order out. It has to be at a restaurant because I love the theatrics of how it’s served – sizzling in a cast iron dish.
I don’t recreate the sizzle at home – I wish I could! If you have a cast iron dish or a small skillet so you can take it straight from the stove to the table, then you’ll get the sizzle. And I’m jealous.
However, I was able to recreate the delicious sauce for this stir-fry! Sweet, salty and with a subtle peppery heat,It tastes just like the ones you find in restaurants. Take a look at it! It’s impossible to resist!?
What do you require?
I made it simple for you, and I don’t exaggerate! Here’s all you need:
- Beef – rule of thumb for stir fries: if you’d serve it as steak, it’s ideal for stir fries! You can use a good-to-excellent tenderloin, flank or New York strip / Porterhouse/ Sirloin.), boneless ribeye/scotch fillet. It doesn’t need to be a high end dry aged steak! To use a budget slow cooking cut of beef, tenderise it the Chinese way before using (“velveting beef”);
- Honey And black pepper – the two dominant flavours in the sauce!
- Oyster sauce – loaded with complex flavours, a secret weapon in Chinese/Asian cooking. Submit with Hoisin
- Chinese wine aka Shoaxing wine – the secret ingredient in 99% of Chinese cooking. It can be subed with Mirin or dry sherry as well as cooking sake. You can sub with chicken broth/stock for a non-alcoholic version (see the notes).
- Soy sauce – everyday, ordinary all purpose soy sauce. Or light soy. Don’t use dark soy – too strong!
- Garlic and onion – because not much food happens in this kitchen without these two!
How to do it
Stir fries cook super fast once they are cooked. Make sure you have everything you need to throw in the wok before you begin cooking.
In this recipe, we cook the beef first, then take it out – this is to control the cook time of the beef. Next, heat the sauce in a saucepan until it turns syrupy. Finally, add the beef to the pan.
Stir-fry sauce with intense flavours
My stir fry recipes tend towards the side of Be generous amounts of sauce, because a stir fry isn’t a stir fry if you don’t get to eat sauce soaked rice. After eating the stir-fry, no one wants to eat plain rice.!
This Beef Stir Fry is an exception. This honey pepper stir-fry sauce has a rich flavour. It is a concentrated syrupy sauce, not thickened with cornflour/cornstarch as they are usually.
So you don’t want nor need loads of sauce. But there’s enough to carry plenty of flavour through the rice!
And another difference to most of my stir fry recipes – this Beef Stir Fry is light on the veg, whereas most stir fries are a kaleidoscope of colour of a small amount of protein with lots of veggies!
So serve this with a fresh side – like a crunchy Asian Slaw, this Chinese Lettuce with Creamy Sesame Dressing or a leafy Asian Side Salad with Sesame Dressing.
You could also sneak some veggies into the stir fry – some julienned carrots and similar shaped vegetables would be ideal.
Enjoy! – Nagi x
PS Healthy low-carb option try Cauliflower Rice – 77% fewer calories and 87% less carbs than rice.
You can see how it is done.
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Beef stir-fry with Honey and Black Pepper Sauce
Ingredients
Sauce
- 2 1/2 tbsp soy sauce (Note 1)
- 3 tbsp honey
- 1 1/2 tbsp Oyster sauce (sub Hoisin)
- 1 1/2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine , Mirin (Note 2)
- 2 tbsp Water
- 1 tsp Ground black pepper (or 1/2 tsp regular ground black pepper
Stir Fry
- 2 tbsp Peanut oil (or vegetable oil or canola oils)
- 1 Garlic clove Finely minced
- 1/2 Onion Peel and slice the fruit
- 500g/1 lb thinly sliced tenderloin, flank, sirloin/Porterhouse/strip, sauteed steaks (Notes 3)
Instructions
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Combine the Sauce ingredients in one bowl.
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Over high heat, heat the oil in a large skillet or wok until it smokes.
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Cook the garlic and onion for about 1 minute, or until translucent. Make sure to keep the garlic moving so it doesn’t get burned.
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Stir fry the beef for about 1 minute, until it is cooked to your taste.
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Turn down the heat to medium and pour in Sauce. The sauce will soon start to simmer. Allow it to cook for about 1 minute until it turns syrupy. The bubbles will get larger and turn a caramel-coloured color.
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The beef, onion, and any juices remaining on the plate should be added back to the wok. Stir in the sauce and let it sit for about a minute. Don’t overcook your beef. It would be a disaster!
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Serve immediately with rice or Cauliflower Rice for a low-carb, low-cal option.
Recipe Notes
1. Soy Sauce Use regular all purpose or light soy sauce. Do not use dark soy sauce – flavour too intense.
2. Chinese cooking wine This is an essential ingredient to making authentic Chinese stir-fries. Click here for more information.
Substitute Mirin, dry sherry or cooking sake
A non-alcoholic substituteSubstitute both the cooking wine AND the water with low sodium broth/stock. Reduce soy sauce by 2 tbsp
3. Beef – As with all stir fries, this cooks very quickly so you need to use a decent cut of beef for it. You can stir fry this if you would serve it as steak. Rump, flank, sirloin/strip/Porterhouse (same thing), t-bone and scotch fillet/boneless rib eye are excellent for this recipe.
Slow cookingYou must tenderize them (see below) to make them like chuck. How to tenderize beef in a Chinese restaurant)
The beef should be sliced against the grain. The beef’s fibres tend to be in one direction when you look at it. Place the beef on a flat surface so that the fibres face you. Next, cut the fibres. Then, cut parallel to the direction that the fibres are going (see here for an illustrative picture). This makes the beef tenderer!
Other proteins – It’s great with pork, chicken, and turkey (finely sliced).
4. NutritionPer serving, except rice
Nutrition Information:
Original publication July 2015. Updated November 2019 with new photos, new video and the most important thing – Dozer Life section added!!!
Life of Dozer
It’s Melbourne Cup tomorrow, the race that stops the nation! 🐎🐎🐎 We’re heading out to a lunch and Dozer’s coming. He is now getting ready for Race Day! 😂 Turns out his hat is a little small…. You will need a larger one!
