• Recipes
  • Equipment Reviews
  • Taste Tests
  • How to Cook
  • Videos

California Barbecued Tri-Tip

From

June/July 2007

California Barbecued Tri-Tip

Unlike other barbecue recipes, California Barbecued Tri-Tip recipes cook the meat over high heat and season it only with salt, pepper, garlic, and the sweet smoke of the grill. This consistently produces a charred exterior and very rare center—but we wanted the outside cooked less and the inside cooked more. To achieve this, we pushed all the coals in our grill to one side, which created a hot zone for cooking and a cooler one for finishing the meat slowly. Searing our California Barbecued Tri-Tip directly above smoldering wood chips left it tasting like the inside of a chimney, but holding off on the wood chips until after we’d seared the meat and moved it to the cool part of the grill lessened the impact of the smoke.

Serves 4 to 6

If you can't find tri-tip, bottom round is an acceptable alternative. The traditional accompaniments to tri-tip are Santa Maria Salsa and California Barbecued Beans.

Ingredients

The recipe you requested is for
Members Only.

Start Your 14-Day Free Trial Membership

Every Recipe. Every Rating. Every Video from
Every Magazine & Every Episode!
  • 8 years of Cook’s Country Foolproof Recipes
  • Complete Cook’s Country TV Video Library
  • 2,900+ Equipment Ratings and Ingredient Taste Tests
  • Step-by-Step Technique Photos
  • Save Favorites, Create Menus, Print Shopping Lists
How we use your e-mail address
Christopher Kimball, Founder and Publisher

Dear Home Cook,

If I were new to CooksCountry.com, I might think, "It's easy to get free recipes on the Internet. What makes your recipes different?" Well, unlike recipes from blogs, message boards, and other recipe sites, our recipes are exhaustively tested by our team of full-time test cooks until they offer consistently great results. That means fried chicken with a crunchy coating and moist meat, a low-fat recipe makeover for macaroni and cheese that’s as creamy and cheesy as the full-fat version, and fork-tender slow cooker pot roast.

We're obsessive in our quest to find and foolproof the best of American home cooking, from fuss-free weeknight dinners, to updated, simplified versions of regional specialties, to slow cooker and make ahead meals. CooksCountry.com is the only place you can find every foolproof recipe published in Cook’s Country magazine since 2005, plus objective ratings and test results from both Cook’s Country and Cook’s Illustrated for cookware and supermarket ingredients.

Let me make a simple, no-nonsense offer. Try out our website FREE for a 14-Day, No-Hassle Trial Offer. I’m pretty confident that CooksCountry.com will quickly become an invaluable resource for everything from a quick Tuesday supper to your next get-together with family and friends.

Thanks for your consideration,

Christopher Kimball

Christopher Kimball
Founder and Publisher

How we use your e-mail address
Related Content
© 2013 America’s Test Kitchen. All rights reserved.