About Sous Vide
Sous vide, also known as low temperature cooking, is a way of cooking food in water immersed within some sort of vessel, be it a plastic bag or a jar, over multiple hours. The benefits of this form of cookery is that the food gets evenly cooked the entire time and will never dry out or overcook. For cooks looking to try sous vide with plastic bags, a vacuum sealer can be a godsend. While modern sous vide cooking was considered cutting edge and avant-garde, the equipment necessary to pursue it has dropped significantly in the past decade; a sous vide “stick” can clip to the wall of any reservoir and can allow you to regulate the temperature of the water you are cooking with. You will also want a pan or even a cast iron skillet so that you can give the meat a proper sear-the low temperatures common to sous vide cookery are too low to induce that wonderful chemical reaction known as the Maillard reaction.
About Tri Tip
Tri tip is a cut that is taken from the bottom sirloin subprimal of cattle and weighs roughly 5 pounds if untrimmed. Common approaches to cooking tri tip include serving it as tri tip steak or placing tri tip on a charcoal grill to yield smoked tri tip deliciousness. The main benefit of sous vide tri tip is that you will never risk burning or drying it out and it will always be nice and tender.
A Step-By-Step Guide to Cooking Sous Vide Tri Tip
While sous vide is a relatively simple way to cook food, that simplicity means that you can gain quite a bit of variety and innovate to find your own signature spin on a recipe. It is with this observation in mind that we present several different ways of preparing tri tip via the sous vide method.
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Basic Rubbed Sous Vide Tri Tip
Ingredients
- Tri tip, 2 lbs
- Your favorite beef BBQ rub, 2-3 tbsp
Directions
- Thoroughly season all of your tri tip with the BBQ rub.
- Place your tri tip into the sealable vessel off your choice, be it plastic or a glass jar.
- Set your sous vide cooking device to 127°F and leave it to cook in the water for 6 hours.
- Once 6 hours elapse, transfer the stored tri tip into an ice bath without removing it from its vessel. Allow the encapsulated tri tip to rest in the bath for at least three and no more than five minutes.
- Free the tri tip from its container and place it atop a pre-heated smoker. Smoke the meat for one hour or just until it reaches an internal temperature range of 132°-135°F.
- Slice it up and serve it up!
Sous Vide Tri Tip
Equipment
Ingredients
Instructions
Nutrition
Basic Seasoned Sous Vide Tri Tip
Ingredients
- Tri tip, 2-3 lbs
- Garlic, clove, 1, crushed
- Salt, to taste
- Pepper, to taste
- Oil, cooking, your favorite kind
- Either your favorite kind of BBQ sauce or fresh chimichurri
Directions
- Set your sous vide setup to 131°F.
- Add salt and pepper to the meat however you like it. Place your crushed garlic and the seasoned meat within a freezer bag and then evacuate all of the air through either a vacuum sealing tool or by displacing the air bubbles. Immerse the sealed tri tip into the sous vide water bath for 6 hours.
- When time is up, free the bag from its bath and then remove the tri tip from its bag. Pat the meat dry and add additional salt and pepper to suit your tastes.
- Place a pan on high heat and add cooking oil.
- Sear the tri tip within the pan for 1 to 2 minutes per side.
- Slice up the tri tip and serve it with a drizzle of either BBQ sauce or chimichurri.
Buttered Garlic Sous Vide Tri Tip
Ingredients
- Tri tip, 2 lbs
- Salt, kosher
- Pepper, black, freshly ground
- Leaf, thyme, 2
- Garlic, cloves, 3, minced
- Butter, unsalted, 4 tbsp, cubed
- Olive oil, extra-virgin
Directions
- Heat a pot of water to 134°.
- Season the tri tip with salt, pepper, thyme, and garlic, then transfer it to a resealable freezer bag. Add the butter to the meat at this time and seal off everything but a single corner.
- Slowly immerse the bag of meat into a large vessel of water until almost all of the air has been let out, then complete the seal.
- Add the bagged tri tip to your heated pot of water and cook it at the 134° until the thickest portion of the meat reaches an internal temperature of 130°; this should take roughly 105 minutes. Repeat the resealing process as needed and adjust the heat as cooking goes on in order to maintain water temperature.
- Remove the tri tip from the water bath and its bag and bring it over to a cutting board.
- Allow the meat to rest for 5 minutes and then scrape and throw away the lingering garlic and thyme.
- Either light your grill or preheat a skillet.
- Dry the meat with paper towels, followed by a brushing of olive oil and a light sprinkle of salt and pepper.
- Finish the cooking process by cooking the roast on very high heat, giving it a single turn after 5 to 7 minutes. Your goal is a roast that is uniformly brown in color.
- Bring the cooked roast back to the cutting board, allowing ti to rest for 10 minutes this time.
- After the meat has sufficiently cooled enough for the Maillard reaction to take effect, thinly slice up the tri tip, going against the grain, and serve.
Shoyu Garlic Sous Vide Tri Tip
Ingredients
- Tri tip, 1.5-2 lbs
- Salt
- Pepper
- Soy sauce, 2 tbsp
- Garlic, cloves, 6, roasted then crushed
Directions
- Set your precision sous vide cooker to 129.2°F
- Season both sides of the meat with salt and pepper.
- Place the seasoned beef into a resealable plastic bag, followed by soy sauce and the garlic cloves.
- Seal the bag almost completely, leaving a small opening in the lips and gradually sink it into your water bath. Allowing the air within the back to seep out from the tiny opening as you immerse more and more of the bag into the water. Seal the bag completely once the last of the air escapes.
- Cook the bagged tri tip for 2 hours.
- Once two hours have elapsed, remove the tri tip from the bag and the water bath and allow it to rest for 10 minutes.
- Heat up a pan, ideally a cast-iron skillet, over high heat and sear the steak until it turns golden brown, giving each side roughly a minute of contact.
- Slice up the meat, serving it by itself or with your favorite sauces for beef.
In Conclusion
So, there you have it, tri tip is a nice cut of meat that allows you to do a lot of versatile things either in the kitchen or at the grill. When you combine the versatility of a tri tip with the reliably dedicated and novel approach to cooking that is sous vide, you are going on a journey that only a disappointingly small number of cooks seem to consider. Having made it to the end of this article on cooking your tri tip roasts via sous vide, you should be able to understand just how easy it can be to prepare tri tip, let alone most any other food, ala sous vide. Get your water to the right temperature; seal your meat with whatever seasonings and sauces you want to marinate with; ease the air out of your vessel; put the sealed meat into the water and go find something else to do until that meat is properly nice and done. Maybe give your tri tip a final sear on the pan to make it look and taste like a proper steak an serve it however you like your tri tip roast.
