Those of yall who know me personally, know that one of my passions is cooking, and smoking meat. I find it relaxing, and somewhat therapeutic..and hell, I damn sure like to eat!
In this thread, I’ll show you a few dishes I’ve done, post recipes, and hopefully y’all will chime in with some of yours!!! I’d love to see them.
Today, I did a tri-tip roast.
I’ve had tri-tip before at a restaurant in California, but I’ve never made one myself. In fact, I’ve never seen one in a grocery store here in Texas until a few days ago. Tri-tip was always a west coast thing to my knowledge, I guess the influx of people from Ca brought it with them.
The meat department at HEB had a sale of them, so I picked one up and decided to give it a go. Tri-tip is a pretty lean cut of meat, and doesn’t fare well for traditional Texas style BBQ, where your meat is smoked ‘low and slow’. I did this one ‘Santa Maria’ style, where this cut was popularized.
Last night, I rubbed the meat down with one of my favorite BBQ rubs, and let it sit overnight in the refrigerator.
I used Salt Lick BBQ’s garlic rub, but you can use any rub you like. I didn’t use a binder, just gave the roast a good coating on all sides.
I brought my trusty Weber gas grill (hey, I use one of those too!) up to a high heat on all burners, stuck my meat thermometer in the roast, and gave it a good sear on both sides.
Then, I shut off all but one burner and placed the roast on the grill for indirect cooking. Target temperature was 132°, as we want the tri-tip to be medium rare. Do NOT cook a tri-tip beyond medium, it will dry out and you will be rather unhappy with the result.
When the thermometer app started singing, I pulled it and wrapped it in foil to rest for 15-20 mins, while I got the mushrooms and potatoes going. The meat will rise in temperature a bit as it rests, and the juice will get sucked back towards the interior of the roast.
Carve the roast across the grain, so that you have short meat fibers and its tender. If you cut with the grain, you’ll have long fibers, and the meat will be stringy and tough. Make the slices relatively thin, like you would a roast beef.
We made roasted baby potatoes, a Cesar salad, and sautéed mushrooms with ours. I didn’t do a very picturesque job of plating my dinner, but I assure you, it was delicious!
The leftovers will be used to make tacos, with pico de gallo, avocado, and pickled onions. If there is any left after that, I’ll probably put it in a pot of chili!
I hope y’all enjoyed!
