A Beef Stir Fry to die for! Tender strips of beef with a sticky honey black pepper stir fry sauce, this is one of my favourite dishes at my local Chinese restaurant. This may well be the 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 is one of my favourite dishes that I order at Chinese restaurants. Never take 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.
But I have managed to recreate the glorious sauce for this stir fry! Sweet, salty and with a subtle peppery heat, this really does taste like what you get at restaurants. Look at it! Who could resist that??
What you need
I promised you simple, and I exaggerate not! 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! Use a decent-to-good tenderloin, flank, New York strip / Porterhouse / Sirloin (same thing!), 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. Sub with Hoisin;
- Chinese wine aka Shoaxing wine – the secret ingredient in 99% of Chinese cooking. Read more about it here, sub with Mirin, dry sherry or cooking sake. For a non alcoholic sub, use chicken broth/stock (see recipe 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 make it
As with all stir fries, once you start cooking it moves super fast so be sure to have everything ready to toss into the wok before you start cooking!
In this recipe, we cook the beef first, then take it out – this is to control the cook time of the beef. Then we simmer the sauce in the pan until it becomes syrupy, then toss the beef back in.
Intense flavoured stir fry sauce!
My stir fry recipes tend to err on the side of generous amounts of sauce, because a stir fry isn’t a stir fry if you don’t get to eat sauce soaked rice. Nobody wants to be left with a bowl of plain rice after eating the stir fry!!
However, this is particular Beef Stir Fry is one of the exceptions. The flavour of this honey pepper stir fry sauce is quite intense, being a concentrated syrupy sauce as opposed to being thickened with cornflour/cornstarch like they usually are.
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 For a healthy low carb option try Cauliflower Rice – 77% fewer calories and 87% less carbs than rice.
Watch how to make it
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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 or dry sherry (Note 2)
- 2 tbsp water
- 1 tsp coarsely crushed black pepper (or 1/2 tsp normal ground black pepper)
Stir Fry
- 2 tbsp peanut oil (or vegetable or canola oil)
- 1 garlic clove , finely minced
- 1/2 onion , peeled and sliced
- 500g/1 lb thinly sliced tenderloin, flank, sirloin/Porterhouse/strip, or any other cut of steak suitable for stir frying (Notes 3)
Instructions
- Mix the Sauce ingredients in a bowl.
- Heat the oil in a wok or large heavy based skillet over high heat until it is smoking.
- Add the onion and garlic and cook for 1 minute or until the onion becomes translucent. Keep it moving so the garlic doesn't burn.
- Add the beef and stir fry for 1 minute until just cooked to your liking, then remove into bowl.
- Turn the heat down to medium high, pour in Sauce - it will start simmering very quickly! Let it cook for 1 minute or so until it becomes syrupy - the bubbles will be larger and caramel colour.
- Add the beef and onion back into the wok, along with any juices pooled on the plate. Toss in the sauce until just warmed through - 1 minute at most. Don't overcook the beef - that would be tragic!
- Serve immediately with rice - or for a low carb, low cal option, try Cauliflower Rice!
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Originally published July 2015. Updated November 2019 with new photos, new video and the most important thing – Life of Dozer 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. So here he is being fitted for his Race Day outfit! 😂 Turns out his hat is a little small…. need to find a bigger one!
This was easy and tasted delicious. I’m not sure my sauce was as syrupy as it was supposed to be but I don’t think this affected the taste at all.
The whole table was going ‘uhmmm, yummmm, so good!’ Thanks Nagi, you did it again for my family 😍
This came together very quickly, but strangely, had little pepper flavor. I used a fresh bold peppercorn, so not sure why it didn’t come through. Resolved by adding fresh ground at the table. Will make again!
Nagi, I have to tell you that my family loves this recipe. We had this dish on a family vacation during the pre-covid era and I am so happy to be able to recreate it with your recipe. I added your Chinese Crispy Noodles to it and everyone loved that as well and couldn’t stop raving.
Your recipes are well organized and easy to follow. I am becoming a better cook because of you. Thank you from Texas!
I made this today sans Chinese cooking wine, OMG it was the perfect dish to re-awaken the taste buds after a day of Christmas leftovers. Fresh, just right sweetness and a good bite of pepper.
Hi nagi, I couldn’t find any of the Chinese cooking wines or subs at my grocery store 🙁 do you think a dry white wine will be ok?
Also totally forgot the oyster/hoisin sauce so was going to use HP sauce (“brown sauce”) do you think this will be ok as well? Thank you
Hi Rebecca, I would just omit the wine – it’s going to taste different without the hoisin, but I’d love to know how it turns out! N x
It’s quick to make… And finger licking… Thanks for sharing the recipe.
I have tried many of your recipes and each time Iam soo happy to have found you.
Awesome looks good
Made it, ate it, loved it. So friggin good
Hi Nagi, I never comment on recipe blogs but my family including a fussy 4 year old and a husband who dislikes stir fries LOVED this! The 8 year old exclaimed it was super delicious and I agree, a big thank you too because its super easy this will be on high rotation in our household in the future.
Nagi! Help! Made this tonight. Was so excited I rushed off to the butcher to buy good beef strips rather than the supermarket. Flavour was fab. Beef cooked for only a minute each time but it was tough. I have never, never been able to do a good beef stir fry. Ever! Beef is always tough. What am I doing wrong.
Hi Dani – do you velvet the beef? If you use the velveting technique the beef is guarantees to be tender! N x
Hi! I followed the recipe to velvet the beef and made the Mongolian beef stir fry and it worked a treat. Even got a “it’s ok” from a super fussy 13yo who usually gags at the table when I serve anything but pasta carbonara so am double happy. Thank you!!
I swapped the beef for a chicken breast, doubled the sauce, added carrots, red peppers and broccoli florets and stalk – AMAZING!
Can I cook the beef crispy like in the Crispy Mongolian beef recipe? Would it be just as nice?
So tasty and easy to make! Used left over 3 marble score rump cap and it was just delicious. My son already wants me to make it again
Delicious! We used filet (2 left over from Costco)…so simple, fresh, and delicious! We used the ground pepper—1/2 tsp…we will increase it next time. We like spicy. Thank you! I’m excited I found your site.
Had this tonight and was absolutely yummo. Thanks Nagi.
I’m so glad you enjoyed it Kerry!! N x
So delicious! Made this tonight using filet mignon