Quick, sticky, sweet, and savory Korean Beef with shaved veggie stir-fry—your family’s new favorite dinner, with a choice of orange juice or pineapple twist.
Meal at a Glance
- Prep Time: 10 min
- Cook Time: 15 min
- Total Time: 25 min
- Servings: 4–6
- Protein: Ground beef or turkey or a combo
- Sides: Jasmine or sticky rice, quick veggie stir-fry
We use HelloFresh from time to time for delicious, no-waste cooking. It’s also a low-bandwidth dinnertime solution. Even though I love being in the kitchen, when I was teaching and came home exhausted, some nights it was just too much to handle. These days, I lean on my Citrus Pear freezer meals to help out. But thanks to HelloFresh, we discovered a new favorite recipe: Korean Beef.
This version is a little different from the original HelloFresh iteration since I merged it with another recipe I found. It uses all the flavors you’d expect—ginger, orange juice, sriracha, soy sauce, sesame oil—and hits all the right notes. I serve it with jasmine or sticky rice and the veggies are my favorite part. Using a vegetable peeler, I shave thin slices of zucchini and carrots, then do a quick stir-fry for a perfectly light and satisfying side dish that takes longer to prep than to cook. Sprinkle with sliced green onions and sesame seeds (black or white) for a colorful, tasty finish.
Yummy, fast, and popular—at least around here. I’d guess this recipe made it into the top three favorites for at least two family members. I should probably collect actual data instead of relying on memory… but oh well!
I’ve made this recipe with all beef, half beef/half turkey, and all turkey. I personally prefer 100% ground beef for flavor, but for health reasons, I often go with ½ ground turkey. The sauce makes all the meat options taste fantastic.
Our youngest is semi-obsessed with K-pop, K-dramas, and Korean food. For her most recent birthday, we went to a Korean fried chicken place and H Mart afterward. She loved it! It was delicious, though not quite as good as the last time we went. The sauce here in this recipe is pretty perfect—sticky, sweet, and salty all at once—reminiscent of a soy-garlic Korean fried chicken sauce.
And here’s a funny twist: my son-in-law asked for this Korean Beef for his birthday dinner, and I happily obliged… only to discover, to my dismay, that I had no orange juice! Panic moment. I did have some pineapple juice concentrate, so I improvised and used that instead. I had hoped to sneak it into the recipe without anyone noticing, but our guests showed up early, and I was caught red-handed. No worries, though—the dish was just as delicious as with orange juice. Maybe even a bit sweeter, which earned the stamp of approval from the Supreme Commander himself.
So here’s the fun part: you get to choose—classic with OJ or the new twist with pineapple. Maybe one day I’ll even try a combo of both!
Serve this with your favorite rice and a simple salad or fruit, and it checks all the nutrition boxes too. Yum—serious yum! The night I wrote this post, our youngest son was coming home for a few weeks, and he was excited when I told him what was for dinner. He even came home a little early to enjoy it with us. Win-win!
I love serving dishes they love to the people I love. Real food. Real kitchens. Real love.–The Food Civilian
Korean Beef
Ingredients
- 1 ½ pounds lean ground beef or ground chuck
- 4-6 whole garlic cloves minced
- ½ cup soy sauce
- ½ cup orange juice see notes below
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 3-4 cubes minced ginger frozen, from Trader Joe's
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
- 1 squirt sriracha sauce more or less, to your taste
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 bunch green onions sliced, for garnish
- 1 tablespoon sesame seeds for garnish
Instructions
- Cook ground beef over medium-high heat until cooked through. Drain grease.
- Combine garlic, soy sauce, orange juice, brown sugar, minced ginger cubes, sesame oil, sriracha sauce, and cornstarch in a bowl or glass measuring cup. Mix well.
- Pour over ground beef, stirring to combine. Lower heat to simmer and cook 5 minutes.
- Serve over cooked rice with steamed or sauteed veggies.
Korean Beef was so easy to make! It tasted AMAZING and will now become one of my new comfort foods. That sweet garlicky sauce is to die for! Thanks Food Civilian!
Easy, amazing meals are what we all need more of. So glad you liked it!
This is such a yummy recipe and fairly easy to make: we followed the Food Civilian steps exactly and it worked out well!
So glad you liked the recipe as written. It is a family fave!