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:
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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”);
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Honey and black pepper – the two dominant flavours in the sauce!
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Oyster sauce – loaded with complex flavours, a secret weapon in Chinese/Asian cooking. Sub with Hoisin;
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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);
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Soy sauce – everyday, ordinary all purpose soy sauce. Or light soy. Don’t use dark soy – too strong!
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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!
We loved this so much and I am so sad there are no leftovers for lunch!
Double batch next time Mary!
Nagi, don’t know where I went wrong, the sauce never got to a syrupy consistency. Hence, it didn’t really coat the meat properly. It was a very tasty sauce, albeit a bit runny. I followed the measurements, any suggestions?
I am cooking this tonight Nagi, sounds delicious, can’t wait to taste it. As usual, easy instructions to follow, will let you know how it goes!
I hope you love it Raelene!
Quite tasty and very easy to make. I used flank steak, and realized when tasted it that this was a good choice, and that the beef choice was actually important as you said!
The beef released some water, most probably I used too much beef for the pan. And I did another mistake which is not throwing away the water. But it was still quite tasty!
Took me 5 mins to make and it tasted amazing ! Thank you Nagi , your blog is forever my go to !
Wahoo!!! Thanks Rabia!
Made this tonight. It was excellent. I added some cut up broccoli with the onion and garlic. Turned out great. Love the flavours! Thanks for the recipe.
Sounds great Duncan!
Wow! This was super easy to make! I absolutely love that this was made during a weeknight – no real bells and whistles in terms of complexity. But all the bells and whistles when it came to flavour! It will definitely be a staple in our house hold. We are used to eating Hakka Chinese food, so we may experiment a bit with spice. But all in all great recipe!!
P.s. hello from Canada!
Stunning!!
Again,you blow me away 😄
Thank you Nagi.
Wahoo! Thanks Phil
hi,
is there a place on your site to save ‘favourites’?
your recipes are in constant rotation!
thanks from Brussels,
tami
Hi Tami, I do have something being released soon!
Hey Nagi I just tried your Favourites button and it works well. So pleased it will save me sending them to the cloud as PDFs. Thank you for such a handy feature.
Thanks Nagi, Another one of your fantastic recipes . We so enjoyed it!
That’s great Therese!!
Could this be made with leftover beef tenderlo
Sure can Elaine!
Nagi, we made this and it was the very best!!! I have a cook up Wednesday and guess what I’ll be cooking.
This takes the anxiety out of my weeks, so I can’t thank you enough for your hard work and time spent putting out these recipes. You are a treasure Xo
That’s so great to hear Mina!! ❤️
Thanks Nagi.. I was elevated to the Chefs Hall of Fame by the family tonight
with this meal..Was truly delicious Everyone was clambering around the pan scooping up the last bit of sauce and rice!
😂 I’m so happy it was a hit!!
Excellent dish. As good as local takeaway or even better. Wife thinks I have cracked Beef. I have been following your recipe for little over a month. Have done a Chinese evening for the family when we had a bonfire. Kids are back for Boxing Day. Not another Roast. Various help yourself dishes. Many thanks
That’s awesome to hear Les, thanks so much for the awesome feedback!
Quick, easy but most importantly DELICIOUS! The whole fam loved it.
Wahoo! I’m so glad it was a hit Jo!
I’m afraid of attempting any Asian recipes but I had to try this one and let me tell you it is a game changer!!! You explain everything so wonderfully. It tasted amazing and has been requested for tomorrow night too! Thank you so much!
That’s so great to hear Lisa, I’m so glad you gave it a shot!
Super easy and super delicious. This recipe is terrific. Will definitely make this again and again! Thanks Nagi
Wahoo! Great to hear Maria!
Another winner and so easy! Highly recommended! Thx Nagi.
That’s awesome to hear John!
Nagi had this dish the other night it is amazing, I did put in more pepper as we like lots of pepper. Will definitely make this again, also went out and bought extra honey as Australia is apparently going to have a domestic honey shortage due to the drought.
I’m so glad you enjoyed it Michelle – N x
Very good, very easy. I served the dish in a bowl with 3 layers: rice, simmered frozen veggies, and the beef on top, garnished with chopped scallions. We loved it!
Sounds fantastic Hermsoven!
Made this with chicken. This sauce is wonderful!
That’s great Karen!