If you’re one that struggles to work vegetables into your diet (isn’t that pretty much all of us?) you’re going to love this Beef and Cabbage Stir Fry. It’s full of vegetables and absolutely addictive. And the best part? It uses vegetables that are super inexpensive so you can know that you’re doing your body and your wallet good. Winning!
Can I Substitute the Beef?
Yes, you can definitely make this cabbage stir fry recipe with other types of ground meat! I think pork or even ground turkey would work just as well or better, and will most likely be less expensive than beef. You can use a whole pound of meat if you like extra protein, but I found that the half-pound I had provided me with just the right ratio of meat to cabbage.
What Other Vegetables Can I Add?
In addition to the cabbage, I also added some shredded carrots and sliced green onion to this beef stir fry for color. There are so many other fun things you can put in your beef and cabbage stir fry. Try adding some of these vegetables:
- sliced mushrooms
- thinly sliced red bell pepper
- water chestnuts
- snow peas
- broccoli
- baby corn
Make it even FASTER!
You can totally take a shortcut here and buy a bag of pre-shredded coleslaw mix to replace the 1/2 head of green cabbage and carrots listed below. Sometimes that’s a more economical purchase and saves you from having a half head of left over cabbage. :)
What to Serve with Beef and Cabbage Stir Fry
This Ground Beef and Cabbage Stir Fry goes great with Easy Egg Drop Soup, Thai Cucumber Salad, Savory Coconut Rice, Pork Gyoza. Although most of the time I just eat it as is! You can also serve it over a bed of rice to bulk up the servings.
Beef and Cabbage Stir Fry
Servings 4 (1.5 cups each)Ingredients
STIR FRY SAUCE
- 2 Tbsp soy sauce ($0.18)
- 1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil ($0.33)
- 1 Tbsp sriracha* ( $0.05)
- 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar ( $0.02)
STIR FRY
- 1/2 head green cabbage ($1.78)
- 2 carrots ($0.22)
- 3 green onions ($0.17)
- 1/2 Tbsp neutral cooking oil ($0.02)
- 1/2 lb. lean ground beef ($3.90)
- 2 cloves garlic ($0.16)
- 1 Tbsp fresh grated ginger ( $0.13)
- Pinch of salt and pepper ($0.05)
GARNISHES (optional)
- 1 Tbsp sesame seeds ($0.08)
- 1 Tbsp sriracha ($0.05)
Instructions
- Prepare the stir fry sauce first. In a small bowl stir together the soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, sriracha, and brown sugar. Set the sauce aside.
- Shred the vegetables so they are ready to go when you need them. Cut one small cabbage in half, remove the core, and then finely shred the leaves of one half the cabbage (4-6 cups once shredded, save the other half for another recipe). Peel two carrots, then use a cheese grater to shred them (1 cup shredded). Slice three green onions. Mince two cloves of garlic. Peel a knob of ginger using either a vegetable peeler or by scraping with the side of a spoon, then grate it using a small-holed cheese grater.
- Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Once hot add the cooking oil, ground beef, garlic, ginger, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook the beef until browned (about five minutes).
- Add the cabbage and carrots to the skillet and continue to stir and cook until the cabbage is slightly wilted (or fully wilted, if you prefer). Stir in the prepared sauce and the green onions. Top with a sprinkle of sesame seeds and a drizzle of sriracha, then serve.
See how we calculate recipe costs here.
Notes
Nutrition
Video
P.S. If you love cabbage as much as I do, check out our Cabbage Soup Recipe!
How to Make Beef and Cabbage Stir Fry – Step by Step Photos
Prepare the easy stir fry sauce first, so it’s ready to go when you need it. In a small bowl stir together 2 Tbsp soy sauce, 1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil (it has a dark amber color and VERY nutty flavor, not always labeled as “toasted”), 1 Tbsp sriracha, and 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar. This makes a medium-spicy stir fry, so if you’re sensitive to heat, start with 1 tsp sriracha.
Next, shred the vegetables. Cut one small cabbage in half, remove the core, then slice half of it into fine shreds (save the other half of the cabbage for another recipe). You’ll need about 4-6 cups of shredded cabbage. Peel and shred two carrots (about one cup). I used a large-holed cheese grater to shred the carrots. Slice three green onions. You’ll also want to mince two cloves of garlic and grate about 1 Tbsp of fresh ginger (I use a small-holed cheese grater for this). More info on working with ginger can be found here.
Heat a LARGE skillet over medium heat. Once hot, add 1/2 Tbsp neutral cooking oil (something like canola, corn, vegetable, safflower, peanut, etc.), 1/2 lb. ground beef, the minced garlic, grated ginger, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook the beef until fully browned.
Add the shredded cabbage and carrots to the skillet and continue to cook and stir until the cabbage has wilted slightly. I like my cabbage to still have a little crunch, so I only cooked it until it was partially wilted. If you like the cabbage fully cooked and soft, just cook it a bit longer.
Pour on the prepared stir fry sauce…
… and toss in the sliced green onions. Stir until everything is evenly combined.
Garnish the Beef and Cabbage stir fry with a little drizzle of sriracha and a sprinkle of sesame seeds. I particularly liked the sesame seeds for the texture they added to the dish!
And that’s it! This Beef and Cabbage Stir Fry is probably one of the easiest dishes I’ve ever made. :)
Oh! This recipe is wonderful. I’ve used a variant of this recipe as the filling for egg rolls for years! Super easy to mix up and fry in pre-made egg roll wrappers. Thank you for sharing. :)
The egg rolls I make also use a similar filling. I have a copycat recipe for Panda Express Chow Mein that uses a similar mixture. While there are differences in the vegetable mixture, I think the biggest difference is the sauce. These recipes, plus a couple others I have, use either oyster sauce or a soy sauce/oyster sauce combination. I prefer the oyster sauce-based sauces.
We made this tonight. It was a huge hit, and my eight year old requested it for lunch tomorrow! (I was a little bummed because I wanted seconds!) Will definitely go into the rotation. Thank you, as always, for your website!
Hi! I really enjoy your site. :) We made this last week and it was good! We made it with ground beef. While it was tasty, we tend to get a little weirded out when we cook with too much meat. We plan on making it with Quorn crumbles this week. I was wondering, though, do you think this recipe would be good with chopped strips of bacon? I wonder if the Asian flavors would go well with bacon… Thanks!
I think it would go great with bacon. :)
So yummy! Made this tonight with a pound of ground white meat turkey, and added a package of mini portobello mushrooms and a sliced sweet onion to stretch it out to feed four hungry people. I used the bag of pre-sliced Trader Joe’s cabbage (10 oz.), which was pretty much perfect. I served it over plain white rice. It was a big hit! The only other change I made was to extend the sauce a little with about 1/4 cup of chicken broth and a little extra soy sauce and sesame oil. Super tasty and easy and healthy and teen friendly and budget friendly! Everything I love in a recipe! Thank you!
This looks like it would make a good filling for lettuce wraps or soft tortillas.
What could you substitute for the sriracha? Could you use hoisin?
I think hoisin would also be great in this stir fry. :)
I used chili garlic sauce. Not a huge fan of sriracha but I use the chili garlic sauce in lots of my cooking.
Made the beef& cabbage last night 02 SEP. . Very good made just like you said. I put the extra sriacha on mine no extra for my wife. Will have the little leftovers tonight with fried chicken. This will be our vegetables.
Fantastic flavor! I didn’t have sriracha, so I did without. Oh my word. The taste was phenomenal. My husband and son both had seconds. There was none left over (I made a smaller batch than your recipe called for). Thank you for the new addition to our “favorites” cookbook.
Same here. I left out sriracha and replaced beef with turkey cut to small peaces but it was really delicious :) will definitely make this again. I was originally look for cabbage recipe because I had a lot of leftover cabbage and this recipe definitely did not disappoint.
I made this with ground turkey and added some fresh cilantro, it was amazing!
I love crack slaw!
Really simple and delicious. Hits the stir-fry spot without the noodle guilt.
This is delicious. Thank you!
Just made this, delicious. Shall be doing it again for sure.
Any idea how this would freeze? Or, how long would this keep in the fridge?
It freezes very well! I’ve kept mine in the fridge for 4 days, and then froze it and continued eating it with no problem!
Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help!
I got the broccoli slaw (with carrots) already shredded at Trader Joe’s for 1.99 (one cent more than your estimate, but no shredding). It was still a winner with the fam!
Beth! Another awesome recipe, thanks for sharing. Made this last night, easy and delicious.