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. :)
In your video it looks like you added 1/4 cup of soy sauce.
The flavour is very good for such a simple and quick recipe, but it came out very wet, probably because of the carrots. Rather than grating, I suggest julienning them and giving them 30 seconds head start on the cabbage. Another fix would be to add an absorbent starch, such as buckwheat noodles, which would also help round out the dish for non-ketomaniacs.
Thanks for the recipe!
What are the macros for this meal?
Thanks for the request! I do get that request a lot, but unfortunately I don’t have a reliable source for the nutrition information. The calculators and databases that most bloggers and websites use to calculate the info can be extremely inaccurate, and for something that can so severely impact the health of people with health conditions, I just don’t feel comfortable publishing unreliable numbers. I prefer to leave it up to the reader to use the database or calculator they trust. I’m sorry and I wish accuracy were easier than shipping the food off to a lab for analysis!
This was so good and easy. I also tried it with left over pork loin and just as good.
Great use of leftovers!
Can I please
Get nutritional info
Really delicious and really easy!! My picky boyfriend asked halfway through dinner that I make it again (and more of it so we could have more leftovers). I’m not a big fan of spicy and one TSP of the sriracha was perfect for me — still got the more complex flavor but wasn’t uncomfortably hot. I also subbed in ground turkey and broccoli slaw. Loved it!
I’ve made this several times and really enjoy it. I’m trying to shift to a more plant-based diet and was wondering if anyone’s had any luck experimenting with beef substitutes. I’m not using tofu rn. Thanks!
Very good but would like nutritional values please
Sooo good! We have been hooked on your Greek Lemon potatoes for weeks now. Husband went to the store and came back with the ingredients for the potatoes and a pack of pork chops. Made it with a leftover bag of cole slaw greens and the pork chops cut into strips. Amazeballs. From a not so natural cook- thank you.
Super yummy! Added lime and peanuts to it and served with cauliflower rice. Will definitely be making again! This would be really delicious in a lettuce wrap.
Made this as written and it was really good. I definitely want to try it was ground pork next. Thanks for sharing.
I’ve made this several times and it’s always delicious!
Do you think it would freeze well?
My hunch is that this one wouldn’t freeze well because the cabbage will probably break down further and seep a lot of water.
This was a super easy, very tasty dish. Will definitely put this on rotation! I grabbed a premix coleslaw bag from Trader Joes and whipped this up in under 15 minutes. Love these easy weeknight meals.
This is a GREAT way to use up extra veggies! So many veggies would be good in this. Mushrooms, bell peppers, heck I’m pretty sure even left over tomatoes wouldn’t be bad. I’ve tried being as cheap as possible with this but I HATE chopping cabbage. It’s so worth it to buy the bagged stuff! It’s on my menu this week and I have half a cabbage sitting in my fridge and it’s still so tempting to buy the bagged stuff. I have used ground beef, ground turkey, and ground pork in this. The ground pork is my favorite! If I can find ground chicken I’m pretty sure that would be tasty too. As usual, thank you for all of our hard work and dedication to this site!!!
I am about to make this for the third time tonight, it is so good!!! I have only ever used ground pork and, due to my spice sensitive kid, did the lesser amount of sriracha the first time and will again tonight. The second time I swapped it for sambal oelek and it was good, but I’m going back to sriracha this time. Also made rice to go with it, for anyone who wanted it. It’s a bargain meal for sure! And the other half of cabbage will last for weeks, with just a little trim of the exposed edges