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!
This post contains some affiliate links, which means that we make a small commission off items you purchase at no additional cost to you.
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
Have you tried this recipe?Mention @budgetbytes or tag #budgetbytes on Instagram!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. :)
I made this last night with ground turkey instead of beef and red cabbage instead of green. We loved it; both my teen aged boys went back for heaping second bowls.
This was SO GOOD! I loved it! Glad that I did a 1/2 tbs of the sriracha though .. ;-)
Monica
My husband declared this “So delicious” and enjoyed the leftovers as a cold salad the next day. I was cleaning out my freezer and had defrosted a rib eye and sliced it into thin strips instead of using hamburger, and added some maitake mushrooms that were sitting in the fridge, so perhaps my version wasn’t the most “budgety” but it certainly was popular. Thank you for your wonderful site!
This was great. I didn’t have sriracha at home but everything else and I substituted Louisiana hot sauce. It was still just fine. I also used a Coke slaw mix consisting of green cabbage and carrots. Saved from having to do all that chopping.
This was delicious, like dragon noodles with cabbage!
Simple, tasty, healthy, filling and within my budget ! This recipe is perfect.
Love this so much! Made a double batch and really look forward to lunch everyday. Thank you.
I made this with pre-shredded brussel sprouts and ground turkey and it was so so good! We love brussel sprouts in our house and since they’re a close cousin to cabbage (I mean they’re kinda mini cabbages) I figured they’d work too. The pre-shredded type wasn’t as inexpensive as a head of cabbage but I try to save time chopping for weeknight dinners. I’ll buy pre-shredded carrots next time because those were hard to shred!
This looks great, do you know the calories per serving?
When I entered it into MyFitnessPal, I got 262 calories assuming 4 servings for the recipe with no ingredient changes. Taking into account the errors in MyFitnessPal, I would estimate between 250-300 calories per serving.
I was reheating leftovers and decided that I wanted “more” than beef and vegetables. I thought about rice, but didn’t have any leftover and cooking it was going to take too much time. So I cooked a package of ramen noodles. It made something like lo mein. I added a little more of the sauce ingredients (just eyeballed it) and it was great!
Any reason we could not to use some red cabbage if we have both to use up in the fridge?
It might turn the dish a bit grey, but I think it would still taste fine. :)
I made it with red cabbage! not pretty but delicious.
LOL, yeah, purple cabbage turns kind of grey, huh? :)
I made this last night with 1 lb pork, napa cabbage (all I had), shiitake mushrooms (anything to get more veggies into my kids!) and slightly less sriracha as I was making for younger kids. I doubled the sauce because of the extra pork. It was great and will be added to the dinner rotation. Loved how quick it was to make!
Made this tonight, and we all loved it! My minor changes: I left out the sesame oil and sesame seeds because I’m allergic, and I used Braggs soy aminos instead of soy sauce. I added a tablespoon of white wine vinegar to fill the volume left from omitting the sesame oil (and it helps to lighten the heavy flavor of the soy aminos, too.) It was still delicious! Family says, this is a keeper! I would have added some slivered almonds instead of sesame seeds if I had them, and I can’t wait to try it again with some snow peas, as you suggest. Highly adaptable, delicious recipe. Thanks for sharing it.
Uh… this was amazing! Super super easy and quick to make. Made this as a quick dinner before going out and my boyfriend loved it — he finished all the leftovers when we got back! Will definitely be making again when I’m feeling a bit lazy or in a rush :)
Hi made this today and it was absolutely gorgeous. Do you think you could substitute the brown sugar for a sugar substitute as I follow a low carb diet. I used the sugar today but an now worried about the carbs.
I really don’t like sugar substitutes, so I wouldn’t suggest it, but it might you might find that it works just fine for you. :)
what about agave instead of sugar?
Yes, that should work just fine in this recipe, although I don’t know the substitution ratio for agave vs. brown sugar.