Crispy chilli beef or shredded beef is a Chinese takeout dish made from slices of fried beef steak tossed in a sweet, spicy, and savoury sauce. The meat has a crispy coating that tastes spicy, but when you bite into it, you get a tender mouthful of meat.
If you ever crave a spicy steak with a satisfying crunch, 'meat' our Chinese crispy chilli beef recipe.
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Crispy Chilli Beef Ingredients
Here are the ingredients you'll need for our crispy beef chilli recipe.
- thin cut of steak
- Chinese five-powder
- yellow onions
- red chillis
- red peppers
- spring onions
- garlic cloves
- ginger
- oyster sauce
- light soy sauce
- rice vinegar
- chilli oil
- water
- sugar
- Chinese cooking wine
- Cornflour
The unique mix of Chinese five spice, rice wine, vinegar, and chillies gives it a piquant flavour that fans love. Crispy chilli beef leaves a sweet and slightly sour aftertaste.
Steak
For our crispy chilli beef recipe, we use sirloin steak. It's the cheaper cut of meat, and most restaurants use sirloin for cooking meat dishes. Sirloin is also delicious fried.
If you prefer your meat to be soft and melt in your mouth, go for tenderloin steak. It's a prime cut, and the price is higher, but it's also the cut most fine-dining restaurants use due to its extraordinary tenderness.
Ribeye is also tender, although it is prized more for its juicy fattiness. When you use ribeye cuts, you will get a more succulent flavour for your crispy shredded beef.
Chinese Five Spice
Chinese five-spice powder is a must-have ingredient for our recipe. It gives our dish the earthy, spicy, and sweet aromas. If you can't find it, you can combine 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon, ½ tablespoon fennel seed, 3 star anise, and ½ teaspoon cloves.
Otherwise, we would substitute it with an extra inch of ginger and 1 teaspoon white pepper. However, this will give you a less authentic taste compared to using Chinese five-spice powder.
Chinese Cooking Wine
For our recipe, we'll use Shaoxing wine, a typical Chinese cooking wine. It adds a unique acidity with a hint of sweetness to our crispy chilli beef dish.
You can use mirin or cheap sherry white wine if you can't find it. If you use mirin, we would reduce the sugar in our recipe by half.
You can also omit the wine entirely, but it won't give you that same umami aftertaste. We think it's the secret ingredient for achieving an almost similar taste to Chinese takeout at home.
Crispy Chilli Beef Recipe (Cantonese Style)
Ingredients
- 350 g beef thinly sliced sirloin steak
- 1 teaspoon Chinese five spice
- 4 tablespoon cornflour for coating
- ½ cup vegetable oil 120ml for shallow frying
- 1 onion sliced
- 1 red pepper sliced
- 2 clove garlic minced
- 1 inch ginger cut into matchsticks
Marinade
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
Sauce Mix
- 2 tablespoon light soy sauce
- 2 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon chilli oil
- 5 tablespoon water
- 2 tablespoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon cooking wine
- 1 tablespoon cornflour
Garnish
- 4 spring onion green part only
- toasted sesame seeds
Cooking Instructions
- Cut the steak into thin strips and marinate them with oyster sauce for 15-20 minutes.
- Mix cornflour and Chinese five spice powder in a separate bowl. Then, thoroughly coat the meat strips with cornflour mix and Chinese five spice powder.
- Heat oil over medium heat. Once the oil is hot enough (165-175°C (330-350°F) temperature range), shallow-fry the shredded beef strips for 2 to 3 minutes on each side or until they turn golden brown. Set it aside and drain excess oil on kitchen paper. Once all the meat strips have been shallow-fried, put them aside.
- In a clean pan, heat up oil under medium heat, and once the oil is hot, add garlic and ginger. Fry for 1 minute or until fragrant. Then, add in your sliced yellow onions and red peppers. Stir fry for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the sliced red chillis, and fry for another 1 minute.
- Mix the ingredients for the sauce mix with water, then add to the pan and cook until the sauce thickens. Let the sauce bubble up before adding the meat slices.
- Stir fry all the ingredients for another 1 to 2 minutes to incorporate everything together. Sprinkle white sesame seeds before serving for extra crunch to your crispy chilli beef.
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
Calories have been calculated using an online calculator. Nutritional information offered on Honest Food Talks is for general information purposes and is only a rough estimate.
Cooking Tips
Here are some extra cooking tips for beginners making crispy chilli beef, Cantonese-style.
Slicing thin strips of beef
To slice even and thin stips of beef, we place the meat for about 30 minutes in the freezer before slicing. It helps harden the meat slightly to make it easier to slice thinly. You want to cut these about 1cm thick.
We found that 1cm thick strips are the closest to what we get from Chinese takeaways. It's a good balance between bite of juicy meat, crunchy coating and sauce.
Marinate your beef
Make sure you marinate the meat before you cook for maximum flavour. We marinate it in oyster sauce for 20 minutes, but if you have the time, marinate it for 1 hour for an even more flavourful meat.
Coating your meat
For a satisfying crunch, thoroughly coat the strips with cornflour. Similar to salt and pepper chicken, it's the frying of the cornflour that gives this dish the crispy texture.
Frying
Any neutral-tasting vegetable oil would do. We use sunflower oil for shallow-frying our shredded beef. Ideally, you want to fry at 165-175°C (330-350°F).
If you don't have a cooking thermometer, heat the oil and check by dipping chopsticks into it. If bubbles rapidly form around the tip of the chopsticks, your oil is ready for frying.
When stir-frying, you want to remove the meat from the wok when it turns brown, listening for a satisfying sizzling sound the entire duration. This sound tells you that the meat is cooking well.
Based on our experience, you want to fry 2 to 3 minutes on each side. By frying each side for this amount of time, you will create a crispy golden exterior but not dry the crispy shredded beef inside.
Make sure not to overcrowd the pan when frying. Fry in multiple batches. Adding meat to the oil will also reduce the oil temperature. Make sure to adjust the heat to maintain the ideal frying temperature.
Finally, double-frying will give you a nice, super-crispy texture. This technique is the best-kept secret among Chinese cooks. Let the meat rest for at least 10 minutes after the first fry. Then, heat the oil in the pan to 175-185°C (350-365°F) for the second fry. Fry for just 1 minute on each side.
How To Make Crispy Chilli Beef In An Air Fryer
Apart from a wok, you can also use an air fryer to cook crispy chilli beef. After marinating the sliced steaks with the spices, coat the meat thoroughly with cornflour. This method is healthier as you use less oil and rely on the heated air in the air fryer to cook the meat.
Then, drizzle some oil over the coated steak in the air fryer basket. Set the air fryer to ten minutes at 200°C (400 degrees°C) for medium-rare meat. Then, flip the beef over and air fry for another 8 minutes.
Once the time is up, remove the meat from the air fryer and continue our recipe as usual by preparing the vegetable toppings and sauce over the stove.
Crispy Chilli Beef Mince
Here is how to make crispy chilli beef with minced meat. Minced meat is meat the seller has cut into pieces with a chopper or a meat grounder. Some people use this term interchangeably with ground beef, although there is a slight difference. Finely chopped meat usually has more fat than minced meat. Either way, you can use minced or ground meat to make our recipe.
You need to stir-fry minced meat with oil and some Chinese five spice on medium-high heat. Stir-fry until the ground meat is crispy and golden-brown. Put it aside to mix in with the rest of the ingredients after. The rest of the recipe is the same as crispy chilli beef.
Crispy Chilli Beef Noodles
Crispy chilli beef complements plain noodles for a gratifying burst of flavour. Medium-sized egg noodles are the best noodles to round up this dish, neutralising the spicy meat with its blandness.
You need to cook the noodles first in a large pot of boiling water before draining and rinsing in cold water. This method makes the noodles springy and prevents them from clumping together.
To make crispy chilli beef noodles, you prepare the meat as we've shown you in our recipe. Then at the last step, add in cooked egg noodles and stir fry all the ingredients together for a few minutes.
Move the ingredients around the wok so they will not stick together, and when everything is cooked thoroughly, serve with chillis and spring onions.
This dish is well-loved by those who like to set their tastebuds tingling, and it also adds some flavour to plainer carbohydrates such as white rice or egg noodles.
If you have tried cooking crispy chilli beef, why not share it on social media and tag us @honestfoodtalks? We look forward to seeing your final serving of this popular takeout dish.
Are you looking for more easy Chinese takeaway recipes to try at home? Check out our home recipes for Chinese shrimp chow mein and Sweet and sour chicken balls.
Kry
This turned out so delicious! thank you for the recipe ))