Mongolian Beef is easy to make in just 30 minutes, crispy, sweet and garlicky with flavors you love from your favorite Chinese restaurant.
When it comes to favorite Chinese takeout, Mongolian Beef is at the top of the list. The delicious sauce of this popular Beef Dish can be used to make Ground Mongolian Beef and Mongolian Beef Burritos too!
Mongolian Beef is very flavorful and takes just 30 minutes to make from start to finish including all the slicing of the meat! It also uses basic pantry ingredients, so you don’t need to worry about running to the store today for oyster sauce or hoisin sauce. Everything in this recipe is available in every grocery store, so it makes the perfect weeknight dinner idea!
It will blow you away how much flavor you can get in less than half an hour and without any marinating or tons of ingredients. Thin cut steak is quick-fried with a cornstarch coating to give it the signature crispy edges that makes this dish so amazing. Some aromatics are sauteed in the beef fat and then sauce is added to soak up the savory, beefy flavor. Finally the beef gets coated in the amazing sauce and it’s finished with some crisp fresh onions.
This authentic stir fried Mongolian Steak recipe is popular with adults and kids alike for a number of reasons. One, people love anything that tastes like Chinese takeout. Two, the sweet flavor of the dark brown sugar mixed with the salty soy sauce and the strong ginger and garlic is incredibly addicting. Three, you get to enjoy it over a mountain of Steamed Rice, which soaks up all the savory sauce and will take you to your happy place.
What is Mongolian Beef?
Mongolian Beef is a Taiwanese dish that originated where Mongolian BBQ cuisine was popular. In American-Chinese restaurants, it consists of thinly sliced red meat, usually flank steak, that is wok seared with green onions in a savory, sticky sweet sauce made with soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic and ginger. It is usually not spicy, and it can be paired with other vegetables and served over white rice.
Why should you make Mongolian Beef at home?
There are many benefits to making copycat versions of your favorite take out dishes at home. The obvious one is to stretch your dollar. You can typically serve an entire family at home for the cost of one or two restaurant entrees. You can tailor the seasonings and ingredients for dietary and taste preferences. Your homemade recipe will typically be much healthier than the takeout version, and the best part is you don’t have to sacrifice any of the flavor!
How to Make Mongolian Beef
- Steak: Cut the flank steak into ¼ inch thick pieces, slicing against the grain. Place the meat and cornstarch in a large sealed plastic bag and coat the meat completely.
- Fry: Heat the oil in a large skillet or wok over medium high heat. Sear the coated steak pieces in batches. Do not overcrowd the pan or your meat won’t get crispy. Transfer the seared steak to a plate.
- Sauce: In the same pan, cook the ginger and garlic until fragrant. Add the soy sauce, water, and brown sugar and let the mixture come to a boil.
- Finish: Stir the steak back into the sauce and allow the sauce to thicken. If your sauce isn’t thickening, add a cornstarch slurry and let the mixture simmer for a minute. Add green onions to the beef mixture and stir. Serve over rice and a side of steamed veggies
Classic Chinese Takeout Sides
FAQs for Mongolian Beef
Flank steak is the common cut for Mongolian Beef recipes. You can use any quick cooking beef cut such as skirt steak, top round, or tri-tip steak.
Mongolian Beef sauce contains soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic, ginger, water and cornstarch to thicken. The sauce ingredients are simple and you probably have most of it in your pantry right now.
This Mongolian Beef recipe will have crispy seared edges and tender beef on the inside due to cutting the flank against the grain and quick cooking it. You want to make sure not to overcrowd the pan when you are frying or it will create steam and you won’t get crispy beef.
You want to slice the flank into ¼ inch strips against the grain. If you feel uncomfortable with cutting the steak thinly enough and have an hour or so notice, place the steak in the freezer for one hour. This will freeze it just enough that slicing it will be as easy as slicing a vegetable. The meat will firm up enough that you can slice it even thinner if you’d like.
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Key Ingredients
- Steak: Flank steak works well for this recipe because it cooks quickly while staying juicy and flavorful. Plus it’s a pretty inexpensive red meat. You can also use skirt steak, hangar steak, or other thin cut of steak for the same amazing flavors in this recipe.
- Brown Sugar: The addition of molasses to the dark brown sugar adds to the depth of flavor in this dish. You can use light brown sugar if that is what you have on hand, and you’ll still have a tasty meal. However, the slightly bitter molasses flavor does make a noticeable difference in the sauce.
- Garlic: Fresh garlic adds a lot of aromatic flavor to Chinese cuisine, and complements the sweetness of the Mongolian beef sauce.
- Ginger: Freshly grated ginger gives a slight kick to the recipe to balance the sweetness. If you don’t have fresh ginger, you can substitute ½ teaspoon ginger powder, and add it with the soy sauce.
- Soy Sauce: Always use low sodium soy sauce in Asian dishes, as it allows you to control the amount of salt. You can always add a little more to your taste.
- Cornstarch: Cornstarch acts as a thickener when the sauce comes together at the end of this recipe. By coating the beef in it, the cornstarch will cook with the meat and add a crispy coating as well.
Can you make Mongolian Beef ahead of time?
While you can technically make Mongolian Beef ahead of time, it is definitely better when you make it fresh. This dish is known for the signature crispy beef and you will lose that tasty crispy goodness when the dish is reheated. However, one way to make the steak easier to cut is to cut it while it’s really cold, so you can pop the beef in the freezer an hour ahead of starting the dish.
Variations
- Spicy: Make the sauce spicy by adding some red chili flakes, some fresh Thai chiles, or chili garlic sauce. You can also serve it with some Chinese hot mustard or Horseradish Sauce for a spicy creamy blend.
- Meat: Instead of beef, thinly sliced pork, chicken, or even baked tofu would all taste amazing with this savory sweet sauce. Keep in mind that chicken and pork need to be cooked all the way through instead of just being seared like beef. You could also use ground beef or other ground meat.
- Veggies: For a quick and easy one-pan beef dinner idea, you can toss in some popular stir fry veggies like pea pods, shredded carrots, broccoli, and bok choy. Cook the veggies until crisp tender, then toss in at the end with green onions.
More Classic Asian Beef Dishes
How to Store
- Serve: For the best flavor and texture, serve this dish right away while the edges of the beef are still crispy and the onions are still slightly crunchy. It can be at room temperature for up to 2 hours.
- Store: Let any leftover Mongolian Beef cool down and then store in the refrigerator for up to 3 days in an airtight container. It’s best to reheat it on the stove in a skillet.
- Freeze: Freeze Mongolian Beef up to 3 months in a sealed container. Defrost in the refrigerator overnight before reheating.
Ingredients
- 1 pound flank steak
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 1/4 cup canola oil
- 2 teaspoons fresh ginger , minced
- 1 tablespoon garlic , minced
- 1/3 cup lite soy sauce , low sodium
- 1/3 cup water
- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
- 4 stalks scallions , green parts only, cut into 2 inch pieces
Instructions
- Slice the flank steak against the grain (the grain is the length of the steak) the long way in ¼ inch thick pieces and add it to a ziploc bag with the cornstarch.
- Press the steak around in the bag making sure each piece is fully coated with cornstarch and leave it to sit.
- Add the canola oil to a large frying pan and heat on medium high heat.
- Add the steak, shaking off any excess corn starch, to the pan in a single layer and cook on each side for 1 minute.
- If you need to cook the steak in batches because your pan isn't big enough do that rather than crowding the pan, you want to get a good sear on the steak, and if you crowd the pan, your steak with steam instead of sear.
- When the steak is done cooking remove it from the pan.
- Add the ginger and garlic to the pan and sauté for 10-15 seconds.
- Add the soy sauce, water and dark brown sugar to the pan and let it come to a boil.
- Add the steak back in and let the sauce thicken for 20-30 seconds.
- The cornstarch we used on the steak should thicken the sauce, if you find it isn’t thickening enough add 1 tablespoon of cornstarch to 1 tablespoon of cold water and stir to dissolve the cornstarch and add it to the pan.
- Add the green onions, stir to combine everything, and cook for a final 20-30 seconds.
- Serve immediately.
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Husband and I just loved this dish. . We live in NZ so I used topside steak instead of flank which is harder to find here
Easy and delicious. I prefer less sweet so halved the brown sugar and it was still awesome! I will be making it again. Thanks!
Meat came out lovely but sauce too sweet for our family – overall easy to make and for someone who likes sugar it will be nice …
nice
Easy and very tasty, even with just spring onion
Scallions, spring onions and green onions are all the same! I just looked them up. Who Knew?
I’s so delicious!! I love the taste, but how can I replace that huge amount of sugar, if I want to cook it for a person that suffers from diabetes 2? Sugar and Wheat is not really what they should eat. Any idea?
I’m so glad you enjoyed it! I’ve never tested any substitutions for this recipe so I’m not sure what would work giving you the same delicious flavor.
I’ll bet you could substitute any sweetener that the diabetic can tolerate. If the person is accustomed to the taste of artificial sweetener, it should be just as good.
Just tried this and it was delicious. I used full sodium soy & slightly less dark brown sugar and it is kinda sweet but tastes good especially if you add veggies or serve with rice and don’t add salt to those. Everyone in my family who tried it said it was delicious too. Will be saving this recipe!
This recipe is so easy and the taste is great! I add a bag of cut frozen green beans into the wok and let them cook in the sauce prior to adding the beef back in. With a side of rice, this makes for an excellent, complete meal for my family. I make it almost once a week! Thanks Sabrina!
You’re welcome, Gloria! I’m so happy you enjoy it.
Pleased even my picky son in law!! Used sirloin instead of flank steak but it was delicious! Easy and quick! Definitely keeping this receipe again!!
Yum, yum, yum! My family devoured this dish and thank you Sabrina, for another great recipe! I didn’t have a wok, just used a skillet, and scissors made the steak easier to slice. Served over rice with steamed broccoli. So good! Adding this one to my favorites!
This was SO GOOD!! I had serious doubts about my ability to make this, but the recipe is super easy and it turned out wonderfully. It IS quite sweet. We added chili oil to our plates and it just tamped down the sweetness nicely. I did find it to be too much sauce, but that’s not a big deal. I’d rather too much than too little! I used flap meat (slightly cheaper per lb. and much smaller piece), and it worked very well. I’ll be making this again!
In your expert opinion can rice wine vinegar be used the same as rice wine? I have made your recipe for Mongolian Beef and I must say it was excellent. Four of us licked our plates it was so good.
Yes, you can use it the same. I’m so glad you all loved it! It’s one of our favorites too.
Unbelievably good! I doubled the recipe and it turned out amazing! I added brown rice and some broccoli for serving. Wow, it tasted just like a Chinese restaurant.
This tastes like fresh high end take out and I couldn’t be happier with the result. So glad I tried it. My husband devoured it. My flank steak was almost 2 pounds so I increased the ingredients accordingly and having never tried a dish that tastes like take out I’m proud of the results! Thank you!
Wow, thank you so much for the compliment. I’m so glad you both enjoyed it.
First time I tried it, they requested me to cook it agaun. So far I already cooked it 3x in 4 weeks time. We love it. Thank you.
I’d definitely call that a winner!
This is my very first time rating an online recipe. This dish was that good, and I felt guilty for not leaving a thank you note, most particularly because it made my wife happy all day long.
You are so sweet, thank you so much!
It was delicious. I added a bit of sherry, a pinch of crushed red pepper to the oil plus regular sliced yellow onion. I served it with vegetable fried rice but would have been even better served over fried rice noodles! Thank you for such a simple but great recipe.
Excellent Recipe!! Made just as written except adding frozen string beans as one reviewer wrote. Will make again and again!!
I made this tonight used peanut oil which added to the flavour but was to sweet will have cut back next time also would prefer noodles instead of rice but still very nice thank you for sharing your recipe.
I forgot to rate with stars before. This was excellent!! This was just like in a restaurant and so easy to make. It’s quick enough to do on a weeknight as well. Family LOVED it. I feel like a gourmet cook. Thanks for the recipe.
So glad you decided to give it a try! Thanks for the 5 stars.
Mmmmmm good – better than the restaurants! Next time I need to make more – it went so fast! Thanks for the recipe.
Tasty dish, definitely on my repeat list, quick,easy and tasty. I did however substitute the spring onions, didn’t have any, with pre cooked french beans and olive oil rather than the canola oil again not available. Subs may have altered the taste but still delicious.
I have an electric stove (no Wok). I’m wondering if I can get the pan hot enough to quickly cook the flank steak without a wok and gas heat. Any suggestions?
I’m always uneasy about electric stoves because each one seems to heat so differently. I’d say if you’be been using yours for a while now and know it’s heating abilities, give it a shot. Good luck!
Easy, wonderful flavors, and plenty of sauce (so many recipes leave so little sauce for the rice or other starch). Family loved and we have saved this in our recipe folder. Also, added broccoli for additional veggies and was perfectly fine! Thank you Sabrina!
This was DELICIOUS! Accidentally cut my steak strips a bit wide, so just needed to do 90 seconds a side but otherwise perfect! So tasty, will be making this again.
Soy fanático de la comida china y estoy seguro de que esta receta sera de mis preferidas.
I made this for dinner and family loved it. It was a easy meal and the directions were easy to follow. Love making meals that are different and easy to make. Thank you.
Super easy and super yummy! Will totally make again!
Too much sugar. I will cut to 1/4 cup next time (from 1/2 cup) I also added 1/2 a green pepper,.1/2 a red pepper and 1/2 of a yellow pepper sliced, 2 carrots sliced thin and half a jalapeno. I liked it. But way too much dark brown sugar.
your recipes are awesome I like all recipe and try at home.
Thank you so much!
I made this tonight and added broccoli to it with the scallions. Very good!
Fantastic recipe! Easy to make. I really don’t cook much and I put off trying this because I thought it would be very complicated, beyond my limited kitchen skills but this was really straightforward and turned out as some of the best Mongolian Beef I have ever had! Family and friends say we may never eat this away from home again; begging me to make it more often. Great tip to freeze the meat for a bit before slicing. I would also be sure to use LOW-Sodium Soy and DARK brown sugar if you have them available (I used regular soy and lite brown the first time and it was still great however). I served with egg fried rice with onion and about one cup of frozen peas and carrots mixed into the rice. I believe I got 6-8 servings. Make some extra; the leftovers are as good if not better as the flavors meld together over a day or two! Thanks so much; feeling braver in the kitchen now!
What a great meal doubled the recipe it was heavenly. Everyone enjoyed it.
so delicious and fast made.
This was outstanding! Finished with a heavy sprinkle of Black pepper.
Absolutely gorgeous! Wish I had found this earlier. Added red peppers, a touch of sesame oil, onions and a handful of cashews. Perfect! A definite keeper. ?
So glad you enjoyed it! Thank you for coming back and letting me know how it turned out. I love the idea of adding the cashews too!
So easy and delicious, my husband is very basic in his foods, while I am adventurous for new foods. This satisfied us both, I added snow snap peas at end (cooked about 3 min) .
This was very delicious i added onions and bell peppers to mine tho flavor is delicious easy to make had to cook again for range mental health clients they also loved it
Please could you clarify Point 1 on your Mongolian Beef recipe it’s a little confusing. (ie how do I cut the steak). Thank you.
The steak has fibers that run through it and you want to cut in the opposite direction those fibers are going (against the grain). I hope this helps.
I am searching for a sauce recipe used at Mark Pi China Gate restaurant it is yellow in color has some heat is sweet but has some vinegar in it it is served on crispy chicken and shrimp best sauce i’ve ever had
Great easy recipe. It came out wonderful!
Thank you!
So glad you enjoyed the recipe, and thank you for coming back and leaving a review!
This was so good! Very easy too. This will definitely be a regular for me.
I am going to make this but use toasted sesame oil instead. What do you think?
Yes, that would work too. Enjoy!
I made this again! I had a vegetarian with us for dinner, so I substituted tofu for the meat (in small cubes) fried according to your directions with corn starch, and added seteamed broccoli, carrot, edamame and baby corn. Your sauce made the vegetables sing! Thank you again for this amazing and very versatile recipe!
You’re welcome, Mel!
Thank You
I made this last night. My grocery store doesn’t carry flank steak, so I used breakfast steak (a guy from the meat department said it was the closest thing). I also couldn’t find scallions. When it comes to home-cooking, I am no expert. I called my mom from the grocery store, who told me to buy some green onions. Even with my two HUGE substitutions, this recipe was a success! Thank you for helping people, like me, prepare quick and easy…delicious meals for our loved ones.
Green onions and scallions are the same thing. You might also find things called spring onions, which are similar but different. The confusing bit is that this is U.S. terminology, and they can have different (even opposite) names elsewhere.
This was delicious!! And amazingly all 3 of my kids thought so too! The sauce was amazing and crisping the beef was key. Also, popping the meat in the freezer for an hour or so helped heaps in slicing it. Great tip I saw here.
Thanks for the recipe!
I love when I hear the whole family enjoyed the recipe! I know how hard it can be to please everyone, especially kids!
This dish is awesome! My modifications were only to add a bit of crunch and heat so I tripled the sauce, added carrot marchsticks, tiny broccoli florets, a few tsps of thai chili sauce and served over rice. TY Sabrina!
Simple, easy recipe that was delicious! Thank you so much for sharing ??
I made this again, but used extra firm tofu, mushrooms and mixed veggies! I pressed the tofu and cut it into strips. Coated it with cornstarch and cooked it like it was meat. Followed all the other directions the same. It came out amazing!!! Thank you so much for this recipe!!!
MONGOLIAN BEEF: for this recipe do you have to use low sodium soy sauce. i tried low sodium in other things and didn’t like the taste. i can’t wait to try this recipe sounds good.