Five Spice Ground Beef and Eggs

This Chinese five spice ground beef and eggs combo is the perfect example of why we love ground beef so much here in the Kinda Healthy Kitchen. It’s high protein and low fat, requires virtually zero prep, and comes together in one pan. You can easily feed four with it, or if you’re cooking for one, it reheats well and works great for meal prep.

Five Spice Ground Beef and Eggs Ingredients

There are basically three parts to this recipe—the ground beef, the sauce, and the eggs. Simple enough, right? Here’s everything you’ll need:

• lean ground beef
• large eggs
• low sodium soy sauce and oyster sauce
• Chinese five spice
• granulated garlic and ground ginger
• chili oil or chili crisp (I like Lao Gan Ma or S&B)
• beef or chicken broth

There are plenty of customizations you could make with ingredients. If you’d rather use fresh garlic and ginger, for example, go for it.

Want a sweeter sauce? Add some brown sugar (or a sugar free brown sugar substitute) like in my firecracker ground chicken and Mongolian ground beef recipes.

Like I mentioned in my keto cottage pie recipe, if you’re not using a quality beef broth, it’s better to simply use chicken broth. Most store bought beef broths take shortcuts and use flavor additives to make up for the lack of actual beef in their product.

How to Cook Ground Beef and Eggs

You definitely want to get some browning on your ground beef before breaking it apart and fully cooking. For optimal browning, make sure your pan is hot, pat the ground beef dry with a paper towel, and leave it untouched once it’s in the pan for a good two to three minutes.

Hot and dry = better Maillard reaction.

Once you add the sauce ingredients and broth, you may think it will never reduce to a thick sauce. It will, but it’s going to take about ten minutes over medium-high heat. Give it time and be patient. Flavors are concentrating all the while!

After the sauce has reduced to a thick sauce, you’ll use a spatula to create four wells or slots for eggs to go in. The recipe calls for adding chili oil in each well, but you could add olive oil or any oil you like.

Once the eggs are in, reduce the heat and cover. Let the steam cook the whites on top while the heat from the pan and chili oil work their magic on the bottom of the fried egg. Keep an eye on the pan at this stage, especially if you like a runny yolk.

Pro tip: You can rotate your pan over the heat if you notice uneven cooking.

Serving, Storing, and Reheating

Whether you use chili oil for frying the eggs or not, a little chili oil or chili crisp on top is a must have. Add that to some sliced green onion, sesame seeds, and your choice of rice. If you’ve seen my Teriyaki ground beef bowls or bison meal prep bowls, you know I like a 50/50 blend of jasmine and cauliflower rice.

If you’d like a fried rice option while keeping things low carb, check out my post on how to make fried cauliflower rice in an air fryer or this 50/50 cauliflower and brown rice fried rice.

You can store your cooked ground beef and eggs in the refrigerator for a few days, microwaving for around 60-90 seconds to reheat. If you’re serving with rice, I like to store the cooked rice alongside the ground beef and eggs. That way you can just reheat everything together and save some space in the refrigerator.

For a nice crunchy topping that doesn’t add a ton of calories, wonton strips like I served in my Thai curry beef bowls are a solid option.

Okay, that covers everything. Have a question about something I forgot to cover? Leave it in the comments below. And once you try this five spice ground beef and eggs, I’d love to hear your thoughts in a recipe review. Those are always appreciated!