Barbeque: Santa Maria Smoked Tri-Tip

My wife got this recipe from the July 2007 edition of Cooking Light Magazine

I think this dish turned out really well. The meat was incredibly flavorful and my wife made way too much salsa. This was actually a bonus for me as I used the salsa in place of the tomatoes I would normally put on my brown bag lunches.

Now the meat we used is tri-tip, which comes from the sirloin area of the cow.

Tri-tip steak is also known as bottom sirloin or sirloin tip. While tender, it is also pretty far back on the animal and as such is one of the leaner cuts. A good rule of thumb for beef is the farther back on the animal the cut comes from, the less fat it will have.

Ingredients

3 cups hickory wood chips
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 (2 1/4-pound) tri-tip steak, trimmed
Cooking spray
2 cups Santa Maria Salsa
Cilantro sprigs (optional)

Preparation

Soak wood chips in water 1 hour; drain well. (Note: I usually soak my chips overnight. I couldn’t find my hickory chips in the garage, so I grabbed a hickory log, cut it down to size in my chop saw, and then used a hand axe to make little hickory chips)

Combine salt, pepper, and garlic powder; sprinkle evenly over steak. Let stand at room temperature 30 minutes.

Remove grill rack; set aside. Prepare grill, heating one side to high and one side to medium. Place wood chips on hot coals on medium-heat side of grill; heat wood chips 10 minutes. Coat grill rack with cooking spray; place on grill. (Note: I did this and had a problem with flare ups. What I should have done is just placed the chips in my little cast iron smoker box, below is a picture of the hickory chips after I’d taken the tri-tip off the grill, big flare-up issues!)

Lightly coat steak with cooking spray. Place steak on grill rack over high-heat side of grill; grill 6 minutes, turning 3 times. Place steak on grill rack over medium-heat side of grill; grill 40 minutes or until a thermometer registers 140° (medium-rare) or until desired degree of doneness. (Note: I took mine off at 135 and let carry-over do the rest)

Remove steak from grill; let stand 10 minutes. Cut steak diagonally across grain into thin slices. I like to use a serrated bread knife for cutting tri-tip because I think it gives me really good control and it just seems like I can get a thinner cut using it as I’m cutting against the grain.

Serve with Santa Maria Salsa; garnish with cilantro sprigs, if desired. We actually served it with left over home-made spring rolls. Here is what the finished product looks like:

Yield

8 servings (serving size: 3 ounces steak and 1/4 cup salsa)

Nutritional Information

CALORIES 259(46% from fat); FAT 13.1g (sat 4.8g,mono 6.9g,poly 0.5g); PROTEIN 30.9g; CHOLESTEROL 66mg; CALCIUM 26mg; SODIUM 544mg; FIBER 0.7g; IRON 3.9mg; CARBOHYDRATE 2.6g

Santa Maria Salsa

Since my wife made this, no pictures or running commentary for you all. That being said, I highly recommend this salsa. It’s not really very hot or spicy, but it does lend itself well to leftovers. For example, I used some of this in an omelette I made the next morning, and tonight I used some of it to add a finishing touch to the sandwich I made to take to work tomorrow for lunch. Best part about it for my wife was that it was super easy to make.

Ingredients

2 (14.5-ounce) cans fire-roasted diced tomatoes with green chiles, undrained (such as Muir Glen)
1 cup finely chopped celery
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce (such as Tabasco)

Preparation

Drain 1 can tomatoes. Combine drained tomatoes, undrained tomatoes, and remaining ingredients; cover and chill salsa at least 30 minutes before serving.

OK, I know I said no pictures, but here’s a really bad photo of the salsa that we have left in one of those Glad plastic containers…Still tastes amazing. In fact, I think the flavors blend very well over time and it’s actually a bit better after 2 days in the fridge.

Yield

4 cups (serving size: 1/4 cup)

Nutritional Information

CALORIES 10(9% from fat); FAT 0.1g (sat 0.0g,mono 0.0g,poly 0.0g); PROTEIN 0.4g; CHOLESTEROL 0.0mg; CALCIUM 13mg; SODIUM 236mg; FIBER 0.6g; IRON 0.2mg; CARBOHYDRATE 2.4g

 

Endangered Species Chocolate

For those of you about to discover the joys of fatherhood for the first time, good luck.  I’ve read all sorts of books on expectant fathers, birthing, and there are enough books out there that just seem to add to the confusion.

Here is one life saver though, chocolate!

My wife goes through some pretty big mood swings, and nothing helps better than chocolate.  My wife and I are also pretty big believers in sustainability and organic foods, and as I was walking through the local Henry’s, I came across a display of chocolate that drew me in.

This is what I picked up and brought home:

Smooth Milk Chocolate (52% Cocoa Content)
This 3oz. milk chocolate bar is made with all-natural, shade-grown, ethically traded, single-origin smooth milk chocolate. At 52%, this chocolate bar has a relatively high cocoa content as far as plain milk chocolate bars go. The northern sea otter artwork from Judi Rideout is printed on recycled paper using 6.2% soy inks. The chocolate is ethically or fairly traded guaranteeing the workers fair wages and humane working conditions. This product is also certified Kosher by Orthodox Union. On the inside of the label you can learn about the plight of the otter as well as additional information on Endangered Species Chocolate’s core value, Reverence for life, conservation tips and coupons for other Endangered Species Chocolate products.

http://www.chocolatebar.com/shop/p-30-smooth-milk-chocolate.aspx

According to my wife, best chocolate ever!  Normally we buy from Cocoa Mill because they have some damn fine chocolate as well (my wife read about it in the Wall Street Journal).  But from now on, for a quick fix and to support a local chain (they have 23 stores in southern California, even though they just got bought by Whole Foods) we’ll be picking these up.

 

The Cost of Going Organic

Just read a great article from Motley Fool on going Organic.

I thought one of their best tips was the following:

Learn how to cook. If your definition of cooking is mixing the neon orange powdered cheese into macaroni noodles, then you’re likely to be stuck with the overpriced and overpackaged grocery store organics. To take advantage of fresh organically grown produce and meats, take a few courses at a local cooking school or pay a culinary friend for lessons.

Raw, unprocessed food are not only better for you, but cheaper as well.  I’m not a master chef by any stretch of the imagination (although I do like to watch Top Chef).  I know how to brown things, barbeque, smoke and dehydrate.  Between my wife and I we can take most foods, throw some spices on them, and call it a meal.  This saves us a ton of money every month.

Some of the other tips included:

• Going late to the farmer’s market: last minute bargains are great when the farmers just want to get rid of their stuff.
• Thinking Seasonally: not only are things cheaper, but since they come from local areas, the carbon footprint of shipping these items is way less.
• Grow your own: because nothing tastes better than food you’ve just harvested from your backyard.

Not everything will save you money – sometimes going organic is not just about the quality of the food though.  I’m raising chickens in my backyard as a way to teach my daughter about how we get certain foods (and they make great pets) but I figure that in order to get my first egg, I’ll probably be about $300 into this project (I’ve spent about $250 for the coop materials and designed and built it on my own).  Given that we might get 300 eggs in a year from our two chickens, that puts me at about a $1/egg.  I’ve seen prices  range from $5-$8 per dozen for organic eggs. ( $.42 – $.66 per egg ) so my break even for this little adventure is somewhere around 2 years.  If we bought regular eggs at $1.20 a dozen ($.10 per egg), then doing the math it will take me 10 years to break even (this is of course, not including the additional food I have to buy every couple of months).

 

Barbeque: Smoked Pork

This weekend I smoked a 7 pound pork shoulder.  This to me is just about the most perfect lazy daddy meal for the weekend barbeque.  It was good, it was fairly easy, and best of all, we have left overs so I’ve got my lunch all set for the next couple of days.

The equipment:

I use an electric water smoker.  I know that BBQ purists would be horrified as all the cooking shows I’ve seen talk about how the best smoking is done with charcoal.  But let me tell you, my electric smoker plus a handful of hardwood hickory chunks gets the job done, and I can pretty much set it and forget about it for several hours on end (This is especially important for us dads with 3 year olds where we’d rather spend time tending our daughters than a hunk of meat).

This weekend, we couldn’t find the hickory chunks, so my wife bought several hickory logs from the local butcher’s market where she got the meat and I used the electric chop saw to cut up my own chunks.

The last piece of equipment that I highly recommend would be heavy duty tinfoil.  This should be used after the meat has been smoked for about 6-8 hours.  At that point, you’re pretty much going to get all the smokey flavor you want into the cooked meat and the tinfoil helps lock in the juices so your meat doesn’t dry out. 

The meat:

  Since my wife always teases me about how I go into professor mode, I’ll try to keep this brief, but I do want to point out that the origins of southern barbeque came from when the settlers brought pigs to the United States.  These pigs were ideal to live in the southern climates whereas  many of the cattle were ill-suited for survival.  Because of this, you’ll find that most traditional southern dishes involve pork product more often than other meats (except of course fried chicken).  Thus pork became the meat of the South.  I’ve been told by friends that when people talk about true barbeque in the south, they mean pork and everything else is just grilled meat.

The pork shoulder is the entire front leg and shoulder of a hog. In your grocery store you will usually find this divided into two cuts, the Boston butt and the picnic.

The Boston butt has less bone than the picnic and both cuts will weigh about 6 to 8 pounds. If you can’t find a whole pork shoulder at your local store you can get either or both of these cuts and have just what you need. The picnic can come with or without the bone.  When cooking, I’ve found that the meat nearest the bone is the sweetest because of the extra flavoring and so I generally try to find a cut with the bone in.

We go to an actual butcher shop called Hottinger Family Meats, they’ve got a great selection and the meats are relatively hormone free.  I haven’t done the research on their meat source but my wife has and so it’s a pretty safe bet that there’s not a lot of chemicals involved in raising these pigs.

The rub:

You can apply a rub to add flavor.

If you choose to add a rub, do so liberally.  We’ve generally had a lot of good luck with a paprika/brown sugar based dry rub that we make from the spices in our cabinet.  I’d recommend you play with the recipe until you get it to a flavor that you enjoy.  a good base to start with is the following:

• ¼ cup smoked paprika
• 3 tablespoons coarse salt
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon onion powder
• 3 tablespoon light brown sugar

Remember that you are trying to flavor a large piece of meat. To apply, take the pork shoulder or section, trim unnecessary fat and skin, rinse with cool water and pat dry. Take the rub and work it into the meat. Make sure that every part is evenly covered. Pork shoulders can have a very uneven surface with lots of folds and indentations so work it over well.  Once you’ve got the meat covered in the rub, you’ll want to wrap it back up in plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge for a couple hours (I recommend preparing the meat the night before so it’s all ready to go in the morning as you stumble out of bed to get the smoker going). 

The smoking:

Under normal conditions you should plan on smoking for about 1-1/2 hours per pound.  Low and slow is good, but realize that a ten-pound pork shoulder can take 15 hours to finish, so you’ll want to plan your day out to figure out when you’ll be eating dinner the night before.  We started smoking our 7 pounder around 6:30 AM and were ready to eat around 6:00 PM (10 hours cooking, 1 hour resting, and half an hour pulling it apart and getting everything else ready).

If it becomes difficult to maintain the temperature or you want to speed up the cooking time to get it to the table at a reasonable hour, you can always move it to the oven to finish cooking. If you do transfer the meat to the oven (and we have),  set the temperature in 250-275 range, this will speed up cooking as smoking is generally done in the 210-235 range.   However, make sure you wrap the pork tightly in foil to hold in the moisture. Many people, even competition cooks, will smoke their pork roasts unwrapped for half the overall cooking time and then wrap.

Remember though, leave the pork in the smoker for at least 6 hours if you want to get that good smokey flavor – and the lower and slower you cook your meat the more tender it will be when it reaches the dinner table.

Once the meat reaches an internal temperature between 180 F to 190 F it is done cooking and must rest before pulling.  Technically you can serve pork once the internal temperature reaches 165 – but you miss out on all that breaking down of collagen and connective tissue that makes the barbeque so darn tender and juicy.

 

Typically you can pull the meat easily once the internal temperature reaches 190 degrees F, but you don’t want to go above this and the higher the temperature goes the greater the chance it will dry out.

Once the pork is cooked remove it from the smoker (or oven) and let it sit for about an hour. This will cool it down enough for pulling. As you pull the meat apart, place it in a pot on a low temperature to keep it warm.   You want it to be loose in the bun and easy to eat. Now if the pork is smoked right it won’t be chewy in the least.

The finishing sauce:

The traditional sauce for pulled pork is what is commonly called a finishing sauce.  We’ve served finishing sauces based on a vinegar recipe, but I’m tempted to go with a thicker tomato base next time just for a little contrast (Or maybe even whip out the teriyaki sauce that I’m such a huge fan of).  I could recommend half a dozen different finishing sauces, but I’ll leave this up to you as people’s taste are so varied on the subject.   I may post some links to some outstanding finishing sauces that I like later, but I honestly love the taste of the pork without the finishing sauce too.  After spending 10-15 hours prepping and smoking this meat, why cover the flavors?

The sandwich:

You don’t need fancy or flavorful bread for this sandwich. All the bread does is give you something to hold onto while you’re eating the meat.  So put those onion rolls, poppy kaisers and Hawaiian rolls away (Actually, the Hawaiian rolls with a teriyaki finishing sauce might be interesting if you’re going for a luau theme – but it’s not “Southern”) .  For our family, we generally use the 3 inch by 3 inch buns you can get from WinCo Foods bakery.   Cheap, good and we can get 24 rolls for $2.99.

I’ll generally use only a few condiments, including cheese (again, WinCo carries a great garlic Monterey jack cheese) the vinegar finishing sauce, cole slaw and sometimes mayonnaise.

Enjoy:

You’ve “worked hard” all day preparing this meal.  Make sure to invite a few friends over, have them bring the kids and the adults can all hang out in the backyard with a beer or two while the kids play (We actually made espresso/mocha/lattes  with our new portable espresso maker from REI, but that’s a post for another time).