Hunan Beef Recipe

Hunan-style beef stir fry—a dish popular across the country. This is the authentic Chinese version you can make at home easily.

🥘What’s Hunan beef

Hunan beef stir fry is the top beef stir fry from Hunan cuisine. It is made with beef slices, garlic, ginger, and a large number of fresh peppers and pickled pepper. As a foodie who loves spicy food, Hunan food is one of my top choices. It has a lovely Chinese name “小炒黄牛肉” meaning a small beef stir fry. We name small because it is only a short list of ingredients. is quite strong, dense, and appealing.

What does Hunan sauce taste like?

The flavor of Hunan beef is quite strong, dense, appealing, and spicy. Because it uses lots of fresh facing-the-heaven peppers (actually with similar hotness to Thai peppers). This dish is quite hot with a very faint of sour taste bought by the pickled wild peppers.

🌶Pickled pepper and substitute

There are several versions inside China, mostly with essential pickled yellow pepper. We call this 小米椒. It might be difficult to find outside China. This little pickled yellow pepper enjoys really high popularity in China in different cuisines (mainly in Hunan and Sichuan cuisine). It presents a unique sour flavor bought by the fermentation. If you love to make some at home, check out this guide to pickle it at home.

Substitution: if you don’t have pickled wild pepper, you can replace it with other types of pickled peppers. Or add around 1 teaspoon of rice vinegar with fresh peppers to copy the faint sour taste.

Szechuan cuisine vs Hunan cuisine

Hunan and Sichuan (Szechuan) are two of the most iconic Chinese cuisines that are famous for their hotness and large amount of aromatics including ginger, garlic, and scallion. However, they differ substantially from one another. Hunan cuisine distinguishes itself by its assertive flavor, with heavy use of chili peppers. The food is known for its robust taste and intense heat. In contrast, Sichuan has a cuisine that is renowned for its unique numbing quality created by the addition of Szechuan peppercorns. Sichuan dishes are complicated but less hot than Hunan dishes.

Pick the side ingredient – celery

Traditionally, Hunan beef uses celery as a side ingredient. And celery can be replaced with coriander. Celery can add freshness and a lovely crunchy texture to Hunan beef.

How to make Hunan beef

Marinate the beef

Marinating beef is the key step to make sure you can make the beef tender after stir-fried. It is a technique widely used in Chinese cuisine. We use starch (cornstarch or other types) to coat the beef slices to create a lovely tender texture. You can simply mix everything up one time but we have a better way for the best result.

1. add salt, oyster sauce, shaoxing wine, and white pepper. Mix the beef for a while to make sure the flavors are well attached.
2. Then add cornstarch, which performs as the protecting layer of the meat.
3. Finally, add some vegetable oil to coat all of the seasonings and protect the starch inside. This also helps to avoid the sticky problem.

Fry it up

• Prepare all the side ingredients, cut peppers, celery, garlic, and ginger.
• Heat the wok first and then also heat up cooking oil in a wok until warm and then spread the beef slices for around 30 seconds. Transfer out.

• Return the extra oil to the wok, and fry garlic, ginger, and all the peppers until aroma.

• Add celery and sprinkle a pinch of salt too. Return beef, add oyster sauce, and give a quick fry. Transfer and serve with steamed rice immediately.

What to serve with human beef

It is a very hot dish and thus the best serving way is to serve it with steamed rice or even noodles. I also love to serve it with rice noodles, making such an appealing bowl.

How to reheat it

I actually don’t believe there will be leftovers because it is so delicious. Each stir-frying can only be made with a small batch at home. But if you need to reheat it, the microwave is the best option. Re-heating in a wok can cause the separation of the cornstarch and make the beef chewy and old.

Other Chinese beef recipes

• Shui Zhu Beef (Sichuan Boiled Beef)
• Hot Garlic Sauce with Beef
• Oyster Beef with Chinese Broccoli
• Braised Beef with Potatoes
• Beef with Snow Pea Stir Fry
• Black Pepper Beef Stir Fry
• Beef Wonton