Santa Maria-style Tri-tip

Wow, its been a while hasn’t it… ? A combination of lots of travel, meetings, holidays and other problems has meant that there has been a definite lack of barbecue action (and even what little BBQ action has happened such as the pulled pork I made for the Superbowl has not been written up here). Today we are going to try and rectify this by a cook of Santa Maria style Tri-tip. While I have cooked this before (I’m pretty sure cooking of it is mandated in CA’s overly long Constitution…), I don’t think I’ve recorded the process and I’ve also never been fully happy with how it has turned out (as the state BBQ dish pretty much, it seems important to me to get it right…). So inspired by a different method proposed by Meathead in his amazing book which Miss AdventuresInBBQ got me for Christmas, I decided to give it another go via the method of reverse searing.

The tri-tip undergoing its final sear over direct heat just before it comes off the grill.

• Setup: Weber Kettle, no Smokenator and setup for indirect 2-zone cooking. No large water pan, but I added a small pan of cold water on the top grate early on to help bring the temperature down.
  

  The packaged-up USDA Prime tri-tip as it came from Ralphs. The uncooked weight was a little under 2.5lb.

• Meat: USDA Prime Tri-tip from Ralphs. The trip-tip is a boomerang-shaped muscle from the bottom sirloin and normally weighs about 1.5-2lb. It just about fits in a regular Weber foil pan when uncooked.
• Fuel: Royal Oak Lump Charcoal with red oak wood chunks. Since I am not using the Smokenator, I can make use of the irregularly shaped lump charcoal fuel which doesn’t fit well in the Smokenator. For flavoring, we will obviously be using the traditional Central Coast/Santa Maria red oak, although this will be in chunk form rather than the bed of log embers that are traditionally used.
• Cooking temperature: 225 F in the indirect zone for the first part and then direct heat for the final searing. Like a steak (which these are basically really big versions of), we are aiming for 130 F in the thickest part for a medium-rare.
• Prep:
  

  The tri-tip after unpackaging (but before straightening out or trimming)

  1. Not a lot to do with these other than trimming off the few bits of fat and trying to get as much off the silverskin off as possible (most of which was on side but was quite tricky to get off).
  2. After trimming, I placed the tri-tip in a Weber foil tray and sprinkled all over with kosher salt. This then went into the fridge to dry brine for 2 hours.
  3. After 2 hours in the fridge and while the chimney of coals was getting going, I assembled the rub. This was then sprinkled all over the tri-tip and patted into the surface.

Tri-tip after trimming and before dry-brining with the kosher salt.

• Dry rub recipe:

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Santa Maria-style rub for Tri-tip

Author: Tim Lister (adaped from Meathead)

Recipe type: dry rub

Cuisine: barbecue

Prep time:  1 min

Total time:  1 min

Serves: about ¼ cup (enough for 1 2lb tri-tip)

 

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder (not garlic salt since it has been dry-brined already)
• ½ tablespoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon ancho chili powder

Instructions

1. Put everything in a bowl and mix together.

3.5.3226

Close-up of the completed dry-rub.

Tri-tip covered in dry-rub, ready to go on the smoker.

Cooking Diary:

(no graph temperature tracking for this short cook)

• 2:00pm: Trimmed the tri-tip, and dry-brined with kosher salt and put in refrigerator.
• 4:00pm: Started a chimney full of the lump charcoal chunks by placing the chimney over 2 of the Weber fire starter cubes.
• 4:15pm: Assembled the dry rub as per recipe above and sprinkled it all over the tri-tip and patted it into the surface.
• 4:20pm: Tipped the now ashed over lump charcoal chunks onto the bottom grate and piled it over to one side.Placed the top grate on and fitted the Maverick temperature probes through the damper holes and into the grill.
  

  A local cat (which visits somewhat regularly) comes to assist with preparations and check the temperature.

• 4:30pm: Prevented the local visiting cat (we don’t have a cat, mostly because I am allergic to them even if I do like them) from assisting too much with the barbecue preparation while waiting for the grill to come back down to the target temperature of 225 F. Scrubbed the top grate with a wire brush, added a small loaf tin of water to the top grate to help bring the temperature down and added a large red oak wood chunk. Closed top and bottom vents most of the way to help bring the temperature down.
• 5:00pm: Put the meat on the indirect side of the grill with the thick end towards the hot coals. Put the Maverick food probe into the thickest part of the tri-tip.
• 5:20pm: After 20 minutes, flipped the tri-tip over to the other side and re-inserted the Maverick food probe. Added another red oak wood chunk.
• 5:45pm: At this point in time, the internal temperature reached 110 F (20 degrees below the target temperature of 130 F) . Opened up the vents in top and bottom dampers to get the temperature rising and placed the tri-tip over the direct heat to sear the surface for 5 minutes with the lid closed.
• 5:50pm: Flipped the tri-tip over to sear the other side to do the final sear for another 5 minutes.
• 6:00pm: Using my Thermapen handheld temperature probe to test the temperature, we are still a few degrees below the target 130 F.
• 6:02pm: Now reading the target temperature in the thickest part, time to pull it off, slice and eat!

Results for the tri-tip:

The completed tri-tip after it came off the grill. There was no particular resting time (it got a little bit while I got my barbecue beans side going in the microwave).

In order to serve it, there are a couple of tricks to get it as soft and tender as you can. First off, the full tri-tip should be sliced in half across the widest part (roughly top right to bottom middle in the image above). Then you should turn the section around so the narrow end is facing you and then slice across the section (parallel to the large cut you made first) so that you are cutting across the grain, making it easier to chew.

The cooked tri-tip after splitting and slicing.

Verdict: A-

Tri-tip is always a good thing to cook giving tasty results after a short period of time by normal barbecue standards.

This was definitely a success for the reverse sear method. This is where the meat is slowly warmed up in a cooler indirect zone (approx. 225 F in this case) to get it close to the final temperature. It is then finished off over the hot part of the grill to get the seared-off browny goodness. In the past, recipes have called for searing it off first before moving it to the indirect area to finish cooking. The problem with doing the sear first, is that the coals/charcoal is much hotter and closer to top grate at the start and its difficult to avoid getting flareups and burning the meat. This problem is eliminated with the reverse sear as the coals have burned down over the previous 40 minutes before they need to be used for the direct sear. This greatly reduces the chance of burning or flareups during the sear at the end.

The only other problem (a good one!) is that with the tri-tip cooked to medium-rareness, the slicing produces a lot of juice -it’s best to have the cutting board in a tray or have paper towel underneath to mop things up (or have one of fancy cutting board with a drip groove around the edge). Too much tasty beef juice is a problem I am happy to have !