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. :)
This was delicious. I made extra stir fry sauce. I made rice. I used leftover London broil instead of ground beef. I added celery and mushrooms.
Thank you. I will make this again with ground beef next time.
Fantastic! I used coconut aminos instead of soy sauce. Came out great!
I made this tonight with ground turkey. It was delicious! Plus it is perfect for anyone on Weight Watchers or looking for healthy, tasty and filling meal options. I may go back for seconds it was so good. Thank you for another amazing recipe!
I have some purple cabbage I want to use; will that cook down the same way?
Texture-wise, yes. But it will likely turn everything sort of blue-ish, so I don’t know if that would be too appetizing. Haha!
Can you explain what makes this recipe have over 17 g of carbohydrates? We love this recipe and have made it several times but just now realized it has more carbs than we expected and we’re doing Keto.
I just recalculated using our new nutrition calculator and it came in a little bit lower at 14g carb per serving. This calculator allows me to actually look at individual ingredients. Here are some of the values (these are for the whole recipe, not per serving). The highest was from the cabbage at 26g, the carrots at 12g, then the brown sugar at 6g. Other ingredients had small amounts as well, like the sesame seeds, sriracha, etc., but by far the most came from cabbage.
This is so so good and so easy! I used Beyond Beef in place of regular beef (which I imagine didn’t affect the process at all) and the one little mod I did was to finely chop the white and light green parts of the green onions to fry with the meat and garlic, and then sliced the darker green part to toss in at the end.
Love love love this one! I used Beyond Beef as an experiment and it works really well in this dish.
I did that too! So good.
Super easy to make! Delicious and nutritious! Thank you for sharing such a nice and simple recipe
My hat is off to you , Beth. I love your approach to cooking and eating. I used one chicken breast, cut up, and this was SOOOOO tasty.
And quick, and did I mention it was SOOOOO tasty?
Thanks for being so diligent and consistent in providing us with realistic, low cost yummy recipes. Love your blog/website.
YUM! I’ll definitely be making this again. So quick and easy especially using the coleslaw mix shortcut! I think next time I may try using sliced chicken breast or maybe even shrimp instead of ground beef. Very adaptable and healthy recipe. Leftovers didn’t even last a day in my house.
Can this recipe be divided into portions and then frozen?
This one doesn’t freeze very well, in my opinion. The cabbage will get very soft and seep a lot of liquid after freezing and thawing.
I’ve made this SO many times!!! Great healthy staple recipe!!!!
Has anyone ever used purple cabbage instead of green?
Yes! I love purple cabbage. It tastes slightly nuttier and has a more robust flavor than green cabbage.
I highly recommend purple cabbage.
Would it be ok to use the bag of preshredded cole slaw instead?
Yes :)
I made this tonight for the first time and added mushrooms, baby corn, water chestnuts, and snow peas to the story fry. It was so good, fast, easy, and my husband had seconds. This is definitely a keeper.
I have made this recipe lots of times my Husband and I Love it!
Thank you for the recipe.
Love this recipe. Just made it and put a fried egg on top and had the runny yolk go into all the cabbage. It was delicious.