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!
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!
Another fab recipe Nagi! This is tonights dinner, we had your slow cooked shredded beef chili con carne a couple of nights ago, absolutely fabulous flavours! Family of five are huge fans, thankyou, thankyou, thankyou 😋
❤️ That’s fantastic to hear Jacqui!!!
Family of 5 loved this. I’ll cook again. I didn’t get as much colour on mine as your pics, but I’ll try cooking the sauce a bit more next time. Flavour was awesome and it didn’t matter at all.
Sounds like it just needs to cook down a little more Sandra, but I’m so glad you loved it! – N x
Delicious and super quick!
YES! Thanks for the feedback Treina!
Tried this delicious recipe tonight for tea…it was beautiful! I used Scotch Fillet and put in a bit more garlic as we are garlic lovers! Thank you Nagi!
Sounds great Eve!
Don’t know what happened there anyway copy and paste plus corrected the auto spell on your name lol..
Let’s try that again..
Whipped this up for tonight’s dinner, as usual it a winner. I did use Sichuan pepper corns instead and boy what a flavour they bought to the dish, love it Nagi keep em coming
Thanks so much Tony!
Make stirfries for lunch 2-3 times a week and beef does come up on rotation . . . love it but have not been so heavy with honey – love pepper also, so shall copy you exactly. Work for a number of animal welfare orgs but today is not the day to bring matters up – have a fabulous time at the race lunch . . . since Dozer is not wearing a silly hat, find him quite handsome and may he be spoilt to bits also . . .
I hope you love it Eha – love to know what you think! And of course Dozer was spoilt 🙂
Whipped this up for tonight’s dinner, as usual it a winner. I did use Sichuan pepper corns instead and boy what a flavour they bought to the dish, love it Nagy keep em coming
All your recipes are great!!! Thank you from eastern Canada!!
Thanks so much Frank ❤️
This recipe looks and sounds absolutely delicious …
Hi Nagi
This recipe sounds delicious and I am definitely going to make it! Question?…what is the best type of rice to use that is nice and fluffy? Mine seems to come out sticky even when I rinse it.
Hi Theresa! Lucky you mentioned it – I’ve posted the perfect way to cook rice: https://promotown.info/how-to-cook-rice/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
I’ve been making this exact same recipe for a long time and I’m 99% sure I got it from your website. Didn’t you publish this a couple years ago? It’s a great, easy to make recipe. I’ve always found that the sauce doesn’t thicken enough, so I now add a teaspoon or so if corn starch. I will continue to make it a couple times a month.
Hi Steve, yes republished now with a video to match 🙂