This pepper rice dupe is the perfect antidote to your dinner rut. Inspired by the delicious beef stir fried rice dish from the popular restaurant chain Pepper Lunch, it’s packed with flavor and comes together so quickly.
The sweet soy sauce is made up of 6 common ingredients that you probably already have in your kitchen. The finished dish is savory and full of beefy flavor, yet slightly sweet from the sauce and corn.
Tips to making pepper rice
use a cast iron pan
The original pepper rice and other dishes available at the famous Pepper Lunch restaurants are cooked teppanyaki style. This means they are cooked on hot iron plates which help to sear the ingredients. All this helps to lock in the flavors and juices, thus leading to an overall delicious dish.
To achieve this at home, I recommend using a cast iron pan if you have one. Be sure your pan is properly seasoned and heated before adding the ingredients. You should hear a very satisfying sizzle when the ingredients hit the pan.
Canned yellow corn is preferred
While I rarely recommend canned over fresh or even frozen ingredients, in this case the canned yellow corn is preferred. It provides just the right amount of sweetness and crunchy texture to balance out the savory and fluffy texture of the beef and rice.
use perfectly cooked rice
Be sure your rice is cooked with proper water to rice ratio. For this dish in particular, you want to avoid rice that has been cooked with too much water. If your cooked rice has too much water and is too soft, it will turn mushy in the pan and your final dish will taste more like porridge than stir fried rice.
Day old rice works well in this recipe as well as the refrigeration tends to dry out the rice, allowing the rice to soak up the delicious sauce.
don't overcrowd your pan
Overcrowding your pan will lead to the presence of too much steam. We want to ensure this steam has sufficient space to escape into the air, rather than into our food.
For this particular recipe, I recommend using a large pain with sufficient surface area. If you only have small pans, consider cooking in batches to ensure a nice crisp and browning occurs for both the meat and rice.
Pepper Rice
Ingredients
- 10 oz thinly sliced beef
- 1/2 onion, thinly sliced
- 1 green onion stalk, thinly sliced
- 3 cups cooked short grain rice
- 1.5 cups corn canned or frozen
- 1 tbsp avocado oil or any neutral oil
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
Honey Soy Sauce
- 3 tbsp soy sauce
- 1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
- 2.5 tbsp honey
- 2 grated garlic cloves
- 1/4 tsp granted ginger or a pinch of ground ginger
- 1/4 tsp black pepper plus additional to taste
Instructions
- Combine all the ingredients for the honey sauce sauce, mix and set aside.
- Heat your pan under medium heat and thinly slice onion and green onions while your pan is heating up. Reserve some of the green parts of your green onion to garnish at the end.
- Add oil to your hot pan and saute onions until they turn translucent and carmelized.
- Use a wooden spoon to pool the onion slices to the center of your pan. Use a bowl to mold your cooked rice then lay the rice down on top of the bed of onions.
- Lay the beef slices along the outsides and allow to cook for about 3 minutes.
- Top with corn, green onions, and butter. Drizzle the honey soy sauce over the rice and beef then mix everything together until well combined and the beef has browned.
- Gently spread and flatten the beef and rice mixture so the rice gets slightly crispy. Then sprinkle cheese over everything.
- Reduce heat to low and top with a lid so the cheese can melt for about 3 minutes.
- Garnish with reserved green onion slices and serve.
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