We here at Cuisine Capers know our cuts of meat. We encounter them often. So we don’t take it lightly when we announce that we’ve now named the tri-tip roast the perfect cut of grilling beef available.

But Tri-Tip?  This is not a cut that is easily found in our parts.  But fate was smiling down happily on me the other day at Jenifer Street Market in Madison.  I was gazing fondly at the meat counter, when what should appear in my line of vision but a Tri-Tip.  I scrutinized it for a moment or two, then made the plunge.

It was a mid spring’s eve, and it was a perfect night for grilling. So grill it we did. First, we through your basic spices on the roast – garlic, onion, cumin, salt, pepper…. anything you like to put on your beef works here.  It sat at room temperature for over an hour, getting ready to meet the grill.

The grill master made one side of the charcoal grill hot, while leaving the other side devoid of direct heat. The tri-tip was placed in the direct heat for about 5 minutes on one side, then flipped for about 5 more minutes on the other side. Then the beef was moved over to the other side of the grill, devoid of direct heat. The top was placed on the grill, and there it continued to cook away, until it reached approximately 125 degrees.  After resting, it was sliced into thin-to-moderately sized slices.

The end result was fabulous. Moist, tender, perfectly grill-roasted, with the most robust beef flavor imaginable, this has now entrenched itself into our repetoire as the go-to beef dish of the summer.  Served alongside a simple salad of spring greens, along with grilled spring onions and asaparagus, this made for a noteworthy spring meal.

I’ve made a beef roast or two in my time.  My repertoire ranges from a quick yet elegant tenderloin to an extremely slow roasted brisket, braised in a tangy liquidy base.

This weekend I was in the mood for a slow roasted cut of beef.  Not a stringier brisket, and yet not a fattier prime rib.  I headed to the local butcher shop, Kens, in Monona, in search of the perfect cut of meat.  I found a five pound sirloin tip roast and knew that would do the job.

My idea was to roast it like a prime rib – put it in a blazingly hot oven for a short period of time to sear it, then drop it all the way down to around 225 degrees and let it go for a few hours.  In preparation, I did a little bit of searching to see who else in the blogosphere was making their roast beef in that manner.  I found Elise, who is always doing something interesting.  While the method wasn’t quite what I had in mind, she did add an element which I would not have if I had not found her entry.  She put the beef roast directly on the oven rack.

Well, ok, I could add that to the mix easily enough.

And so I pulled the roast beef out of the fridge and let it warm up at room temperature on the counter for about 45 minutes.  I turned the oven on to 500 degrees and let it heat up well in advance.

I cut slits into the roast and studded it with garlic – a trick which I have resorted to often, with good results.  Then I rubbed the roast with rosemary, Penzey’s smoky sea salt, pepper, cumin, and a Penzey’s roast beef seasoning.  It was popped into the very hot oven, which was left at 500 degrees for about 20 minutes.  I had placed a pan on the rack immediately underneath the roast to catch the drippings.  In that pan I placed beef broth, onions, and garlic.

Then I dropped the temperature to 200 degrees and let it go.  Using my temperature probe, I monitored the progress.  After about 3 hours, it began to get up to around 120 degrees.  I had planned on leaving it in for at least 4 hours, and so I turned the oven off completely, without opening the oven door.  This held the oven temperature nicely, and the roast ever so slowly inched its way up to 131 degrees.

As I estimated that my roasted root vegetables would be done shortly, I again turned the oven up high, to about 450 degrees.  The roast temperature rose to 135 degrees.  At that point I pulled it, let it sit a very short amount of time, the sliced it.  I had made a pan gravy from the drippings, broth, onions and garlic that had simmered in the drippings pan, adding some red wine as a finish.

This was perfectly done, melt in your mouth tender, with the best flavor I have ever tasted out of a beef roast, bar none.  This will be repeated, there is no question.

Served alongside roasted root veggies – turnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes and onions, with some cauliflower thrown in for good measure.

I’ve got a 14 pound boneless prime rib sitting in my refrigerator. It will be sacrificed to the hordes of people descending on the house tomorrow. Along with the prime rib will be a spiral cut ham, mashed potatoes, blackeyed peas, broccoli and cauliflower, peas and pancetta, and bread. And possibly shrimp scampi, depending on how much of that is left over from tonight.

But on to the Prime Rib Dilemma… How to cook it? A few choices:

1. 375 degrees steady, til done.
2. 450 degrees for 30 minutes, then 225 degrees til done
3. 450 degrees for 30 minutes, turn oven off and let sit a couple hours, then back on at 375 degrees til done.

Anyone have a preference out of one of the above? Or maybe even their own foolproof method?

Beef with Peppers and Pea Pods

One of the few things we made this week with our produce from our CSA box. This week was very bad in terms of using the produce we got. It turned into a hectic week in general, and we went out to eat/carried food in too much.

Next week will be a better week!

When this month’s Is My Blog Burning? #6 was announced, I was a little bit disappointed that it was “Griller’s Delight”. Don’t get me wrong, we love to grill in the summer, but we don’t get terribly inventive, for 2 reasons:

Reason #1: One of the members in this household stubbornly clings to a 15 year old very small Smokey Joe grill. It’s hard to get creative and inventive when you are working with direct heat on a very small surface. However, that doesn’t bother me for the most part because of reason #2:

Reason #2: We tend to mainly grill Hunks of Meat, and more specifically, Hunks of Cow.
Of course, this could be because of reason #1 (see above). Perhaps it’s just a vicious circle!

But as the week of the event approached, I also was presented with my CSA Challenge. So this became a dual endeavor – coming up with something worthy of the IMBB #6, and using as much of the produce from my CSA box as I could.

And so I settled on Tenderloin Chimichurri with Grilled Vegetables for the IMBB #6: Grillers Delight.

I dug through my produce and spotted the beautiful bunch of parsley that I had previously tagged for a future tabouli. Of course, I always make tabouli with any parsley that lands my way, and so it struck me – Chimichurri sauce would use that produce up, and give me my IMBB entry!

I chopped the parsley with fresh onion and fresh garlic (also from my CSA Box).

I added 3/4 cups of olive oil, 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, juice from 1/2 lemon, salt, pepper, and ground chipotle pepper, then gave it a quick once over with my immesion blender.

I cut a whole beef tenderloin into “blocks”, skewered them, and seasoned them with salt, pepper and chipotle pepper.

We started the grilling with our chopped vegetable medley of yellow beans, fennel bulbs, onions, cauliflower, snow peas and broccoli, seasoned with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper.

The tenderloin was then grilled, with liberal amounts of chimichurri sauce brushed on with each turn.

And here’s the final results, served with fresh tomatoes from the garden. We poured a Chilean wine with the meal. (note MacDuff looking on with approval).

All in all, it was a really good meal, though not as inventive and unique as I think is fitting of a IMBB event!