Monday August 23, 2010
We got back from our road trip on Saturday and I had today off to run errands and what-not. Having a little time this afternoon, I thought I’d grill some Santa Maria Tri-Tip. When I picked them up at the butcher’s, he asked what I was going to to with them. When I said Santa Maria grilling, he said “Ah, you from California” Sure enough; he grew up in Bakersfield just over the Tehachapi mountains from me.
We had this quite often growing up; it’s a relatively cheap cut of meat that you can dress up pretty easily. Basically you use a garlic based rub grill it. There is a basting sauce of garlic infused olive oil and red wine vinegar. Uh, yeah, if you don’t like garlic you won’t like this. I transcribed this recipe from the Food Network site; any mistakes are mine.[Edit May 25, 2018. I originally used a Food Network recipe (that I can’t find now) but now use this later/better recipe.]
The recipe calls for 2 x 3lb tri-tip roasts; those are pretty big and I can’t find them here. I found that 2 1.75 lb roasts work very well though you may want to reduce cutting time.
First I rubbed it and put the oil and vinegar in the Vita-Mix to get a good emulsion.
Rating: ★★★★ 4 Stars
Yum indeed!