Low Carb Mongolian Ground Beef

This low carb spin on Mongolian ground beef pairs extra lean beef with a sweet, salty, and umami black pepper sauce that will light up your taste buds. It’s super easy to make, with a simple ingredient list and 20-minute total recipe time, and every serving is packed with 23 grams of protein and just 4 grams of carbs and fat. That leaves plenty of room for rice, noodles, or other fun pairings.

Low Carb Mongolian Sauce Ingredients

Mongolian sauce is typically made with a blend of soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic and ginger, and sometimes dried or fresh chile peppers. My version calls black pepper and red chile flakes. These add lots of flavor without tons of heat, but you’re welcome to add extra chile flakes or dried chiles, chili oil, or fresh chile peppers (pictured below).

The key to making this Mongolian ground beef sauce low carb is the substitution of Swerve Brown for brown sugar. If you’re unfamiliar with Swerve, they make zero-calorie sugar substitutes that taste, measure, and cook exactly like their real sugar counterparts. The cooking part is really important because you’re after caramelization in a sauce like this.

If you don’t have this ingredient on hand or want to avoid artificial sweeteners, I’ve included nutrition facts notes in the recipe card below for the recipe with dark brown sugar. You could also use something like the maple syrup in my Japanese barbecue chicken recipe.

That said, if you’re hesitant to try new products for fear of never using them again, I have tons of recipes with Swerve brown. For example, my Firecracker Ground Chicken and Healthy Country Style Sausage Gravy both call for it. It works for baking, too!

Making the Mongolian Ground Beef

Once you have your sauce settled, it’s as simple as browning and cooking a pound of lean ground beef before adding the sauce.

Continue cooking, stirring every once in a while, until the sauce thickens. It should take about 6-8 minutes depending on your pan size and burner temperature.

Your spatula should leave a clean trail when you drag it across the bottom of the pan. If you still see broth or a runny sauce, keep cooking!

Once the sauce is the right consistency, you’re ready to serve. I’ll run you through a low carb Mongolian ground beef and noodles variation below followed by a few more serving ideas after that.

For Mongolian Ground Beef and Noodles

There are plenty of low carb noodle and pasta options out there, but one of my favorites is hearts of palm pasta. An entire box has around 60 calories and unlike other options (looking at you miracle noodles), there’s no weird taste. The texture is of course not like a real noodle, but it’s close enough in my opinion.

The recipe mentions Trader Joe’s hearts of palm pasta but if you don’t have access to TJ’s, I’ve used other products like Palmini pasta in recipes like my low carb pasta carbonara.

To make the ground beef and noodles combo, there’s virtually no extra work. Let the sauce cook for a few minutes before adding the hearts of palm pasta for the last 5 minutes or so of cooking. They’ll soak up flavor as they come up to temperature.

Feel free to use any noodle option you want, but you’ll probably want to cook any longer cooking options before adding to the finished Mongolian ground beef.

Additional Serving Ideas

You can’t go wrong with rice. To keep the carbs under control, we all know about cauliflower rice by now. We also know that not everyone loves cauliflower rice. In case you’ve never made my Teriyaki ground beef meal prep bowls or Tex-Mex ground beef and rice recipes, one thing I like to do is mix cauliflower rice with the real deal to mask its meh-ness. There are also lower carb, higher protein rice options like the Right Rice in my Greek ground chicken and rice bowls.

If you wanted to add veggies to your Mongolian ground beef, you could do something like my sweet and spicy ground chicken and broccoli, pan roasting the broccoli for about 5 minutes before cooking the ground beef and adding at the end. Or you could take a page from my sriracha ground beef and green beans, adding a bit more broth and cooking the green beans as the sauce reduces.

For a bit more fun, take a look at my friend Brandi’s air fryer egg rolls. Her version is for taco beef filled, but you could get creative with a Mongolian ground beef and veggie combo. Don’t have an air fryer? Try these oven baked egg rolls instead. You could also use wonton wrappers to make something like my bang bang chicken wonton cups.

Whatever you end up doing with your low carb Mongolian ground beef, I’d love to hear about it. Come back and let me know what you thought about the recipe and how you served it in a recipe review. Those are always greatly appreciated! And if you have a question about this recipe I forgot to cover, leave a comment at the bottom of the post.