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This easy Thai-inspired basil beef recipe has ground beef, sautéed onions, and bell peppers with fresh basil! The sauce is the perfect balance of savory, sweet, and lightly spicy.
You may also like Easy Beef Bowls or Ground Beef and Broccoli.
Why you’ll love it
Let’s talk about the outstanding flavors in this Thai-style basil beef! The homemade sauce has soy sauce, fish sauce, brown sugar, and a touch of sriracha along with plenty of garlic. It’s amazing with fresh sweet basil and the strips of tasty onions and peppers.
This is another Asian-inspired dish using budget-friendly ground beef, ingredients you can find at the grocery store for the sauce, and no wok is needed! It’s also ready in just 30 minutes for a speedy, satisfying meal.
What you’ll need
- Ground beef – it’s lean, filling, and affordable
- Olive oil – for stir frying
- Onion and red bell pepper – for added flavor and freshness. I prefer sweet onions.
- Soy sauce – use low sodium to control the saltiness
- Fish sauce – find it in the same aisle as the soy sauce. It adds so much depth!
- Brown sugar – for a hint of sweetness to make this dish well rounded
- Sriracha sauce – we’re not using tons in the sauce itself, so it’s a gentle heat
- Oyster sauce – optional but recommended
- Garlic – I like a lot in this one!
- Basil – for that signature pop of freshness. Regular/sweet basil is what we’re using.
Helpful tips
- This isn’t Pad Kra Pao, but it very loosely borrows some of the flavors and adapts them to readily available ingredients to make it more accessible. For example, we don’t have the traditionally used holy basil, but sweet basil is actually closer to it in flavor. You can get something called Thai basil in North America, but it’s not recommended for this dish because of its licorice notes — it’s very different from both sweet basil and holy basil.
- Get your pan nice and HOT to get a good sear on the veggies!
- This recipe doesn’t make tons of sauce, so you could always double it if you want plenty to put over rice.
How to make basil beef
This is an overview with step-by-step photos. Full ingredients & instructions are in the recipe card below.
Mix together the sauce ingredients in a prep bowl. Cook the beef in a skillet, breaking it apart as you go. Drain any excess fat, then transfer the beef to a paper towel-lined plate.
Add the olive oil, onions, and bell peppers to the skillet. Sauté until tender-crisp — a little char is great. Remove the skillet from the heat, then return the beef. Pour in the sauce. Return it to the stove, and add in the basil.
Toss everything together until the basil is wilted and the sauce coats the beef and vegetables evenly. Serve immediately over steamed rice with lime wedges on the side.
