This recipe for teriyaki beef stir fry is tender slices of beef sauteed with a variety of colorful vegetables, all coated in a quick and easy homemade teriyaki sauce. A restaurant quality meal in the comfort of your own home!
I make stir fry almost every week, my family always requests chicken and asparagus stir fry, honey garlic shrimp stir fry and this delicious beef teriyaki.
Stir fry: in my opinion it’s one of the easiest and quickest dinner options around. I love the versatility and it’s often a healthy dinner option which is always a huge bonus. Why would you ever want to order take out when you could whip up this teriyaki beef stir fry in about 20 minutes?
How do you make teriyaki beef?
Let’s talk about the meat first – I used thinly sliced flank steak in this teriyaki beef stir fry, but sirloin or another tender cut would work well too. I cook the vegetables first, in this case I used broccoli and various colors of bell peppers, but you can easily substitute your family’s favorites. After the vegetables are cooked, they come out of the pan and the beef goes in – make sure your pan is very hot to get a nice sear on the meat.
How do you make homemade teriyaki sauce?
This teriyaki sauce is a simple blend of soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic, ginger, honey and sesame oil. The ingredients are simmered together, then some cornstarch is added into the mix to thicken the sauce. You can make this sauce up to 3 days before you plan to serve it.
Beef Teriyaki Variations
There are so many different ways to customize this recipe to your family’s tastes.
- Protein: Instead of sliced beef, you can use ground beef, or even chicken, shrimp or tofu.
- Vegetables: While I used bell peppers and broccoli, other great options are snow peas, mushrooms, carrots, bok choy or asparagus.
- Pineapple: For a tropical twist, try adding some cubed pineapple to your stir fry.
I add a garnish of sliced green onions and sesame seeds, but you can skip that if you’re pressed for time or don’t have those items on hand. Even my kids love this teriyaki beef stir fry, that salty, sweet and savory combination just can’t be beat. When you begin cooking the vegetables, start a pot of rice at the same time and dinner will be ready in less than 30 minutes. And you won’t even have to call the take out delivery guy! Not to mention this version is so much healthier – how can you argue with that?
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More great stir fry recipes
- Teriyaki Pork Stir Fry
- Pepper Steak Stir Fry
- Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry
- Honey Garlic Chicken Stir Fry
- Chicken and Broccoli Stir Fry
Teriyaki Beef Stir Fry Video
Teriyaki Beef Stir Fry
Ingredients
For the stir fry
- 1 1/4 lbs thinly sliced steak such as flank steak or sirloin
- 3 cups of mixed vegetables (I used broccoli florets and sliced bell peppers)
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- Optional garnishes: sliced green onions and sesame seeds
For the sauce
- 1/4 cup soy sauce
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons minced garlic
- 2 teaspoons minced ginger
- 1 tablespoon of honey
- 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon cornstarch
Instructions
- For the sauce: Place the soy sauce, water, brown sugar, garlic, ginger, honey and sesame oil in a small pot over medium high heat. Stir until sugar is dissolved, about 3 minutes. Turn up heat to high and bring to a boil.
- Mix the cornstarch with 2 tablespoons of cold water until dissolved. Add the cornstarch mixture to the sauce and boil for 1-2 minutes or until sauce has thickened. Set sauce aside.
- For the stir fry: Heat 1 teaspoon vegetable oil in a large pan over medium-high heat. Add the vegetables and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 3-5 minutes or until vegetables have started to brown and soften.
- Add 2 tablespoons of water and cook, until water has evaporated. When your vegetables are crisp tender remove them from the pan and set aside.
- Wipe out the pan. Heat the remaining 2 teaspoons of oil in the pan over high heat.
- Place half of the steak in the pan and season generously with salt and pepper. Cook for 2-3 minutes on each side or until just cooked through.
- Set the first batch of steak aside and repeat the process with the rest of the beef.
- Add all of the meat and vegetables back to the pan. Pour the sauce over the top and cook for 2-3 minutes over medium high heat until warmed through.
- Garnish with sesame seeds and sliced green onions if desired.
Great recipe! Followed step by step and came out perfect. Entire family loved it!
So happy to hear you enjoyed it, thanks for reporting back!
What an amazingly tasty and easy meal to cook. I mixed in kumera (sweet potatoe), noodles with it and it was so delicious, much better than the shop bought teriyaki sauce and gluten free too 👍👍👍
So glad to hear you enjoyed it, thanks for reporting back!
So good. The homemade sauce was delicious. Way better than store bought. I do have to say my steak was a bit tough. I didn’t use flank as I only had sirloin. Maybe the pieces were too thick. Otherwise will be making this again.
So glad to hear you enjoyed it, thanks for reporting back!
Made this last night and it was so delicious. The leftovers today (shocked there were any) were incredible. I kept the veg (carrot, mange tout, red pepper) separate to the meat, added onion to the beef, and served it with rice. Great combination and a new favourite dish. Will use a better cut of meat next time and may add some chilli flakes too to give it a touch of warmth. Thanks for the recipe!
So happy to hear you enjoyed it!
easy to follow recipe, authentic chinese “brown sauce”, tastes great! Wifey and kids loved it, this Dad was hailed as a hero. highly recommend it, thanks for sharing this recipe!
So glad to hear everyone loved it! Thanks for reporting back!
This recipe is easy and tasty , I make it last night . Thanks.
This recipe was fantastic! I used snow peas, red pepper and onion. I was delicious!
This recipe was fantastic. I made it with snow peas, red pepper and onion and served it over ramen noodles. So delicious.
We found this post on Pinterest and knew we had to make it. It came out really, really good!
This Meal turned out to be incredible! My wife and I totally enjoyed it. Every detail of the recipe provided was exact and perfect. This one goes up on the of “Must Have” again. Good job. Keep up the Good Eats!
What brand of soy sauce do you reccomend? I have noticed quite a few of them taste different.
I typically use low sodium kikkoman!
I am out of sesame oil. Any idea how using a different oil will affect the flavor? I do love sesame oil.
I’ve only ever made this with sesame oil, if you don’t have sesame oil you can just omit it!
Can you store it in the fridge and use a different day? If so how long will it stay good for?
This stays good for 3 days in the fridge!
Hello! Very excited to try this along with the honey garlic chicken. I am trying to eat healthier and it may be a silly question, but I was wondering what size of serving it is to the calorie count? Thank you for sharing.
Approximately 1 1/2 cups!
We made the shrimp version last night and loved it. We’ve made many stir frys with many varied sauces, store bought or homemade, but this stir fry is the best we’ve ever have at home. Excellent sauce!!
Great Recipe! I used this recipe mostly for the sauce as an idea for what I already had in the house that needed to be used up. I doubled the recipe keeping the brown sugar and sesame oil measurements the same as listed. Sesame oil can be strong, you can add more after your taste test if you want. I also added a little pineapple juice that I had left and about to expire…and red pepper flakes for some heat. So ya, I kinda made it into something else… but as is it is PERFECT! Great for many things. I had some cheaper rib eye steak that I scored on a deal…but had little marbling.
To comment on an above question…. flour and cornstarch are interchangeable as a thickening agent however keep in mind… flour makes it more of a ‘muddy’ appearance and cornstarch give it more of a ‘glassy’ appearance.
OMG! I will be making more tomorrow, it was amazing! So easy and delicious.
I made this tonight for my husband and I will say I have tried making my own stir fry sauce and each time it either burned upon adding it to the meat/vegetables or tasted too much like soy sauce. The sauce from this recipe was PERFECT. It didn’t quite thicken enough but that was likely user error and either way the flavor was spot on. I will definitely be adding this to my rotation and look forward to trying other recipes from this site.
I forgot the cornstarch.. can it be replaced by flour or baking powder??
You could try mixing a little flour with water, adding to the sauce and bringing it to a boil.
Great recipe! Thank you! Needed to use up some sirloin and we cut it in thin strips was perfect ! Also used stevia instead of Brown sugar and half of soy sauce to cut back on sodium.