Now and then I like to share things I’ve cooked other than bread. But they’re also great to go with bread! This time it’s brisket-style barbecue Tri Tip steak. Tri Tip is predominantly a US West Coast cut, and more specifically, it tends to be a California cut. But if you can find it outside of California, it’s a great cut that can be cooked in a variety of ways.
The traditional way of cooking Tri Tip is over a hardwood pit using indirect heat for the first part of the cook then searing the outside in a sort reverse sear method. This is a method I’ve used for years. But since I got such a great deal on the last two Tri Tips I purchased, I decided to smoke one like I would a brisket to see how it would turn out. As you can see from the picture above, it turned out fantastic!
Here are the steps:
Preparation
Tri Tip is a rather lean cut of meat, but invariably, it will be encasd on one side with a thick layer of fat. So before you do anything, trim the cut, removing the hard fat and silver skin. If you do leave some fat, make sure you don’t leave more than 1/8″.
Next, you should brine the steak for 12-24 hours. With the steak above, I dry brined it with my homemade rub. In the future, I think I will wet brine in a marinade. The reason is that Tri Tip has a loose muscular structure, and even though good cuts have marbling, because of that loose structure, the fat leeches out during a long cook. Wet brining should help bolster the moisture in the meat.
Barbecue!
Like any barbecued red meat, it takes time to cook. For this cut, I used my Traeger pellet smoker:
- 2 hours on the “Smoke” setting (it’s about 160)
- Turned up the smoker to 180℉ and cooked until the internal temperature of the meat read 160℉. By this time, the meat formed a beautiful bark! (~3 hours)
- I removed the meat from the grill and wrapped it tightly in butcher paper and turned the temperature up to 225℉.
- Returned the meat to the grill then barbecued it until the meat had an internal temperature of 200℉. (~6 hours)
- I immediately transferred the meat (still wrapped) to a jumbo ziploc bag, then let it rest for 30 minutes in a cooler. Normally I’d rest it for a couple to a few hours, but it was dinner time and I was hungry! 🙂
As you can see, it was a pretty straightforward process. That’s the beauty of barbecue! In the future, I will definitely dry brine the meat overnight and even inject it to bolster the moisture. The only issue I had with this cook was that even though the meat came out super-tender and moist, I would’ve liked it to be a lot more juicy. Tri Tip has less fat than brisket, so I believe you have to make up for the lack of fat with some other liquid.
That first night after cooking, I just ate it straight with some BBQ sauce and some veggie on the side. But since I still had a bunch of meat left over, it made some great sandwiches the next day!
The Dawg House! 