Tri-Tip is available elsewhere?
Wine pairing?
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I had guests this evening. I had a pairing picked out, but one of my guests (my father) brought a bunch of wine so I went with that, a Rodney Strong Pinot.
Menu was tri-tip with chimichurri, hassleback potatoes, grilled asparagus. Other guests brought a cheese platter starter and brownies a la mode for dessert
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It’s not available everywhere here but it’s available at a lot of spots. My favorite purveyor always has it.
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Pork belly burnt ends ended up looking better than the other two flavors, but I do say that the mojo marinade was delicious
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I love bacon, but often when I’ve had pork belly it’s been a bit too fatty for my taste. I don’t care for flabby bacon either. I’d like to try pork belly burnt ends as I think that could get the fat rendered the way I like it, but I’m not willing to make it as I might not care for it.
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This was a giant Costco slab that was supposed to be quartered on initial purchase, frozen and then done as part of four cooks.
But last August didn’t go as planned, so we got a massive cook yesterday.
Oddly, the belly itself was a way meatier than expected. The fat cap was really trimmed down, which was nice.
We took all three slabs to 185, and the the burnt ends spent another 45 minutes on direct heat at about 400F braising down. The fat rendered out beautifully on the burnt ends and the ended up having perfect burnt ends consistency.
The other two slabs could have stayed on longer (another 45-60m to 195?) To rendered out more of the fat. I did end up cutting off the fat cap portion of the three slices that I had.
We still have 90% of the other two slabs, and will likely portion it up to be frozen then used as part of other cooking adventures. A pan fry of this stuff and then it would be ready to add to most anything.
Grilled some scallops and okra today. Served with a zucchini and artichoke pie. For some reason I’m getting an error message with the pics
Trying again with the pics. I think maybe they were too large, but I was getting a different strange error message when I tried.
Enjoyed the Steven Wright quote (putting a humidifier and dehumidifier in the same room and letting them duke it out). 
I’m guessing you did the tri-tip sous vide, followed by a sear on the grill? I only recently got into sous vide, and am now wishing I’d done so sooner. Did a tri-tip this way just over a week ago and it was easily the best I’ve made. My daughter, who normally doesn’t like meat at all, raved and raved about it.
I used to dislike pork, especially chops, but sous vide has completely changed my willingness to put this on the menu.
However, I’m finding now that I often prefer doing the sear inside rather than on the grill. I recently picked up a set of Hestan Cue bluetooth cookware. It comes with an induction burner, and both the burner and cookware connect to an app on your phone. It provides little mini-videos for each step of a recipe. Several of the recipes include a sous vide step, and then perfectly handle the sear in the Cue. We’re having a lot of fun cooking with it, and the kids are learning a ton by following the steps. They’re even picking out the next recipes they want to try.
Pork belly is another good candidate for the “sous vide followed by sear” process. I agree that it can be too fatty with many preparations. But my wife and I went to a date night cooking class where the teacher used this method and it was absolutely delicious.
I did not. I cooked the tri-tip at 350-375 on my smoker without using a water pan. It gets direct heat that way, but at a distance from the coals. This method works very well IMO for this cut.
I pretty much always sous vide my steaks now though. They turn out perfect every time.
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Your method for tri-tip is quite similar to what I was doing prior to sous vide. You might give it a shot. BIG difference IMO.
My local Costco sells (sliced) sous vide pork belly. I have seared it and air fried it and generally prefer the latter. It’s pretty amazing in ramen or with eggs for breakfast. Not sure how widespread it is but if you see it at Costco I recommend it.
I might like to sous vide it myself but it’s hard to find pork belly here, one Asian grocer stocks it but it seems they only have really fatty cuts for some reason.
Air fried, huh? I’ll bet that is good. Is it a huge mess to clean up when cooking pork belly?
Our air fryer is nonstick, so it’s really not. But yeah, it does generate a fair amount of fat at the bottom! It seems about 370-380F is kind of the sweet spot for pork belly in my machine. I usually start checking it around the 14-15 minute mark and it’s done around 16-18 minutes.
1 minute per side?
These are big steaks at nearly a lb each so I went longer than that. I’d guess somewhere in the 2-3 min/ side