This quick and easy Chinese Orange Beef boasts perfectly balanced flavors and can be whipped up in less than 30 minutes on the stove top with basic pantry ingredients. It’s a great week-night dinner that’s even faster than take-out! Serve it with white rice or another favorite grain and a vegetable side for an easy dinner everyone will love.
Make Orange Sauce
To make this easy orange sauce, you’ll whisk together orange zest and orange juice, brown sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, chili sauce, ginger, and cornstarch.
If you’ve never worked with fresh ginger, check out this post for more info. I like use a cheese grater to grate directly into the bowl.
Prepare Beef
We’re using flank steak here and since we need it cut super thin, it really helps to pop it in the freezer for 15-20 minutes before you cut it. You don’t want it completely frozen through, just firm enough to add some resistance so you can slice it as thin as possible. Make sure to cut your steak “across the grain” for a tender bite. See this post if you’d like a more detailed description of that process.
Cook the Chinese Orange Beef
Cook the Chinese Orange BeefThis cooking process is quick and simple! Give the beef a quick saute (you may need to do this in batches) and remove from the pan. Pour your sauce in the pan and use a spatula to scrape up all the cooked bits and then simmer it together with the beef until it’s thickened.
It’s sweet and savory and bright and flavorful. This sauce is spot on, and it perfectly clings to the tender steak. It’s loads better than take-out, and faster too! Here’s some serving ideas to go along with this easy meal.
PrintQuick and Easy Chinese Orange Beef
- Total Time: 25 minutes
- Yield: 4
Description
Easy Chinese Orange beef can be whipped up in less than 30 minutes on the stove top with pantry ingredients. Serve with white rice and a vegetable.
Ingredients
2–3 teaspoons grated orange zest (I just zest 1 whole orange)
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons Asian chili sauce
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
2 teaspoons cornstarch
vegetable oil for pan
1 1/2 pounds flank steak, trimmed and sliced thin across grain and lightly sprinkled with salt and pepper (to clarify: that’s one steak, that weighs about 1.5 pounds)
3–4 green onions, sliced
hot white or brown rice for serving
Instructions
Whisk orange zest and orange juice, brown sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, chili sauce, ginger, and cornstarch together in a bowl.
Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Drizzle pan with oil and tilt to coat. Add half of beef, breaking up any clumps and let cook without stirring for one minute. Stir beef and continue to cook until browned, about 2 minutes; transfer to a bowl and cover. Repeat with remaining beef and transfer to bowl.
Whisk sauce to recombine, add to now-empty skillet, and cook over medium heat until thickened, about 2-3 minutes. Return cooked beef, with any accumulated juices, to skillet and toss to combine. Serve over rice and garnish with green onions.
- Prep Time: 10
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Cuisine: Asian
Questions & Reviews
Made this tonight and served it over coconut jasmine rice. It was amazing! I’ve been suffering from a case of meal boredom recently and I’m so glad I decided to branch out with this recipe. It was way better than Chinese takeout. The orange zest and fresh juice take this dish over the top. I’ll definitely add some broccoli next time to round out the dish and to make it go a little further on my budget. It will be a miracle if I don’t make this again next week. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe!
I am always looking for recipes with beef and this one looks delish!!!!!!!!!!! We eat too much chicken.:)
My boys(husband & son)tend to love recipes with an asian-sweet kick to it!!!
I will be tryig this recipe soon.
Thanks Sara!
So, I’m guessing if I use HOT chili sauce, it will be way spicier than you intend by suggesting SWEET chili sauce? Or can they be interchanged?
hmm, I’m not sure, but I bet you’re right! I’d start with a little and go from there 🙂
I haven’t made this –YET!!! But to anyone wondering if thry could freeze this: According to my friends on a Yahoo Foodsaver group site, they freeze everything! I’m waiting for my Foodsaver to get here and then I can cook to my heart’s content — or until I’m tired. I live alone so making my own dinners from “leftovers” will be wonderful. My Foodsaver friends say that everything they’ve “Saved” tastes like “just made”. No, I’m NOT a Foodsaver representative. Just a wannabe — soon-to-be user. SOOOOO — if it can be vacuum frozen, why not ziplock bag frozen?
Not sure Kathie, you’d have to try it!
Just finished eating this and I loved it! Couldn’t find the chili sauce, so I used shichimi to add a little kick in its place. Beef is super expensive here, so thinking of replacing half the meat with veggies next time. Thanks!
I made this last night and it was delicious! It tasted better than take-out, and much healthier. I served it with rice and broccoli. My entire family loved it – even my three-year-old. It was so quick and easy to put together too!
Can you make this as a freezer meal? I try to see which ones of ya’lls meals can be freezer mea;s but only a couple have directions to freeze. I am in a meal swap group for freezer meals and your website come up alot in my head to get ideas from. but i wish they all had directions for freeing them! I never know whether or not to cook the meat then freeze or leave it raw..etc.
Made this a couple weeks ago and the hubby LOVED it…today I was wanting a crock pot recipe to throw in before church and decided to give this a shot. SO DELICIOUS! I doubled the sauce to make sure it didn’t dry out, cooked it on low all day, threw in the orange peels for extra flavor, and the beef was melt in your mouth amazing!! Plus, the whole house had an awesome orange scent all day 🙂
This looks yummy and I’m going to try it this weekend but can you substite chicken breast or thighs for the steak?
I’m sure you could, you’ll just have to experiment, but either one should work. Enjoy!
I made this with some thinly sliced leftover roast beef, and wow was it ever good! That sauce is amazing, and my husband agreed it was way better than any takeout!
I made this tonight and it was delicious but WAY too HOT! We had to pull all traces of the steak and sauce out of our kids rice before they tried it! I am thinking next time I go shopping for Asian Chili Sauce, I won’t be buying the one that says “hot”. Just a word of warning for all you who are putting it on your shopping list (I usually like spicy foods but this was intense!)
Oh no! Yeah, most chili sauces (like the one pictured) aren’t very spicy, they’re more sweet and tangy. That’s a good word of warning though; you never know!
My Fiance and I made this for dinner last night and it was great! He asked me to add it to our regular rotation. Thanks so much for the recipe!
Love that you’re doing a lot of Asian inspired dishes.
Loved it! I walked in the door from work at 5:10 and had it on the table by 5:45. I used some random steak that was in the freezer (defrosted just a bit in the microwave so I could slice it) and served it with a bag of frozen stir-fry veggies and some grilled pineapple on the side (yeah, that was a treat). Next time I think I’ll do it with chicken. I love recipes that I can whip up using my pantry and freezer items!
So I made this last night and it ended up being ridiculously spicy. Now granted the hubs and I are spice wimps but did I do something wrong? I don’t get it? I used the asian chili garlic sauce. I put in two tablespoons because that is what it said however I noticed in your pic you used a teaspoon so was it supposed to be 2 teaspoons? Help! : (
That’s so weird. It IS 2 teaspoons, but I have a page printed off from this very post and mine says teaspoons. Maybe it somehow got changed?? Only one other person commented on it being too spicy, so I’m not sure what happened! Asian chili sauces really vary in heat levels too. The one I use isn’t spicy at all so I could use a ton without a problem. I made sure the printable version is correct now, I’m sorry yours turned out so hot!
Oh, my goodness! This was divine! And miracle of miracles, my children liked it. SO much, in fact, that my oldest (9yrs) asked me to make it for his birthday dinner! And pretty easy to make, too.
I love your measuring spoons! Do you remember where you bought them?
Yep, they’re from World Market 🙂
Made this tonight and it was delicious! Thanks!
This was delicious and super easy. I used a Cara-cara orange and it’s juice, and 1 Tbsp of sriracha for some kick, also no fresh ginger, I used dried. Perfect balance of sweet and spicy. I used flank steak, but this could easily be adapted for chicken, pork or shrimp. Thanks for a new recipe for my rotation.
That’s great you don’t shop on Sundays-we’re Catholic and don’t shop then either. 🙂 This recipe looks great!
Sweet Chili sauce….FREAKING YUM!!!! I use that for my salad dressing quite a bit. There’s only one kind I really like that is a different kind but similar.
This looks absolutely amazing!
I was so excited about this recipe because I had no idea what i was making for dinner then I saw this and was thrilled that I already had all of the ingredients. I have never found a recipe of yours that I didn’t like (I have tried a ton of them) and I especially love Asian chili sauce so I thought for sure this recipe would be amazing. Unfortunately however, this was not a hit with me. My husband loved it so obviously there is just something wrong with my taste buds. I’m not sure what it was maybe something about the orange flavor?
This was a total hit for me and my hubby! Thanks!
Oh I so want to get the ATK Quick Family Cookbook. Have you liked it? If the recipes in it are all like this delicious looking one, I’ll have to get it soon.
Yep- one of my favorite books!
Wow–this was amazing and so easy to make! We liked it so much, I am going to make it again next week! 🙂 The only changes I made were: I added minced garlic and I reduced the amount of chili sauce.
I made this for dinner last night and it was DELICIOUS! I’m a busy lady so the easy to follow pictures and the instructions on the blog made this a breeze. Thanks so much!
any holiday BUT christmas thyme means lots of sweets to make
This was AWESOME! We really enjoyed it. Recommend adding a healthy dose of siracha (to taste) to the sauce if you like spicy like us.
I just made the Quick and Easy Chinese Orange Beef for dinner and it is the best I have ever tasted, my husband loved it as well. As stated, it was very easy. We will surely make it again and again.
Hmm, I hate to ask this since the name of the recipe IS Chinese *Orange* beef, BUT – do you think anything else would do the trick besides orange? Would lemon just be wrong?
Ha! You’d have to experiment with anything other than orange- I think that’s the best option!
Yes, I definitely think orange would be best, but my poor hubby had to go and be all allergic to orange on me…. haha.
The recipe does look amazing though!