Smoking The Perfect Tri Tip

There is nothing like biting into a perfectly cooked, juicy, smoked slice of Tri Tip. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it. The thought of the flavors as they run through my head get me excited. And now with the ease and affordability of electric smokers, this can be accomplished by anyone.

Ingredients

Tri Tip – I like a 2-3lb piece of meat with some fat cap on one side

Rub – Enough for a good rubdown and complete cover of the Tri Tip

Kosher Salt – A few Tablespoons should do. Also enough to cover the Tri Tip

Smoker – This recipe calls for an electric smoker like the Big Chief.

Wood Chips or Pellets – Either one will do. Flavor will be up to you.

Oven – Preheated to 450.

Selecting your Tri Tip

Selecting a Tri Tip isn’t the most difficult thing to do. You can pretty much walk into your butcher section of your local market and be ok with whatever selection they have. If you want to be a little more selective, find yourself a nice piece that is about 2-3lbs and has a nice fat cap on top. Once you have that, you are ready to go.

Seasoning your Tri Tip

I find for smoking Tri Tip that you don’t need a ton of time to season and let you meat rest. If you have time, great. I like to get my meat to room temperature. While I’m doing this, I will get my meat nicely salted with a coarse kosher salt. Give the meat a full rub down with the salt and let it sit for a bit. If you’d like, you can even salt it and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.

Now that your meat is nice and salted, you can begin to add your seasoning or rub. For this selection I went with something called Rudy’s Rub.

This is a pretty flavorful rub that I like to use on beef as well as chicken. They are out of Texas. Here is a shot of the back so that you can see their contact info if you are interested.

Be sure to give your Tri Tip a thorough rub down with the rub as it needs to be completely coated to get all of the flavor brewing.

Shake it on generously and then rub it in good and be sure to get all of the nooks and crannies. If your hand doesn’t look like this when you are done, you didn’t do it right.

Tip – If you happen to have any cracks or cuts on your hand you might want to wear a glove as most of these rubs and spices contain peppers. Just sayin’

Firing Up The Smoker

As I mentioned, I like to use the Big Chief and Little Chief smokers. They are quite affordable and easy to use. In fact, Amazon has the Big Chief on sale right now for $50 off bringing it to about $115 total which is not too bad at all. Click HERE to see that deal.

While your meat is resting, go ahead and get your smoker fired up and heating. The Big and Little Chief smokers don’t have settings, it is either On or Off and I like to give it a good 30 minutes or so to thoroughly warm up.

Once it is warm, you are ready to insert your Tri Tip.

I like to use it on one of the lower levels and keep it close to the heating element. Not sure that it really matters, but that is what I do. The Big Chief has about 6 levels that you can choose from, and plenty of room to do multiple pieces of meat if you like.

Once your meat is in, close the front door and get your first pan of wood chips ready. For this particular batch, I am using Smokehouse Alder which is more known for fish and poultry, but I like it on my beef and even pork dishes as well.

Go ahead and get your smoking pan filled and ready. I like to fill it completely to the top. Some folks like to soak their chips prior to placing into the smoker but I’m about 50/50 on doing that, and for this batch, I went dry.

Place that pan in the smoker and kick back and relax.

Smoking Process And Cooking Time

This is totally personal preference, but I like to put in a new batch of wood chips about every hour. Some folks have a strict 2-Pan policy, but play around with it to find out what you like.

When pulling out your used pan of wood ashes, be sure you have somewhere that you can dispose of them. Be careful as they will come out very hot and you will be very easily burnt if you are not careful.

For a 2.5-3lb Tri Tip I like to smoke it for about 3 hours as this gets a good amount of smoke flavor on and into the meat. With 3 hours of smoke time I will have used 3 pans of wood chips, one to start, one after hour one, and one after hour two.

After the three hour mark, I’ll go and take a look and temperature reading of my Tri Tip. In the Big Chief, it won’t be thoroughly cooked as you’ll need to get it up to an internal temperature of right around 140 degrees. Here is how I work through the finishing process.

The Finish

At the three hour mark I’ll pull the Tri Tip out of the smoker. I’ll bring it in the house and place it in a baking dish and surround with foil completely covering the meat.

Here is where the oven comes in. I will place the Tri Tip into the preheated (450 degrees) for 15-20 minutes. This will seal in the juiciness and get the meat to the proper finishing temperature of 140.

Once it hits that 140 mark, pull it out and let it rest for approximately 10 minutes. At that time, slice it up and prep for serving.

In the picture above you can see the juiciness of the meat as well as the temperature gradient around the edges. Since you are not doing the full cooking in the smoker, you most likely wont see a smoke ring in this recipe.

Go ahead and take your first bite. Its really hard to just have one. Now that it is all sliced up and ready to serve, dish it up with your favorite side dishes and prepare to hear lots of oohs and ahs.