Slow-Cooker BBQ Tri-Tip

My wife made some really good BBQ Tri-Tip today in the slow-cooker. The recipe is pretty easy to follow. You would swear you got this meat from a professional. I was really impressed. Here are the ingredients. As always, feel free to give it a little bit of your own flavor.

• (1) Tri-Tip Steak
• Stubbs BBQ Rub (available at Vons)
• 1 bottle Trader Joe's Smoky Kansas Style BBQ Sauce

Cover the meat with a thin layer of the BBQ rub and work it into the meat. Place the meat in the slow-cooker. Pour the whole bottle of BBQ sauce on top of the meat. You can cook it at whatever temp your available time allows. We cooked it on high for 6 hours and it was still pretty tender.

The BBQ sauce we used was particularly good. I highly recommend you give it a shot. Hopefully you have a Trader Joe's near you.

Once the meat is ready you can do what you'd like with it. We made some sandwiches with a little mayo, bread & butter pickles, sliced onions, and of course extra BBQ sauce. No matter how you prepare your favorite BBQ sandwich, this meat is sure to please.

Let me know how it goes.

Guinness Tri-Tip Marinade

If you like Guinness, or good meat for that matter, this recipe is for you. People often cook with beer, but a stout the quality of Guinness can provide so much more flavor than a simple Budweiser can do. This recipe is good for one tri-tip steak. If you are grilling more than one steak, double the recipe.

• 1 bottle Guinness
• 3 tbsp Cayenne Pepper
• 2 tsp Table Salt
• 2 tbsp Black Pepper
• 4 tbsp fresh garlic
• 4 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

Start by pouring the full Guinness bottle into a mixing bowl. You want this to be your main liquid ingredient, so if you play with the recipe, try not to overpower the Guinness. Mix in all the ingredients. This probably won't smell good to you, so you don't want to go by the nose on this one. I thought it smelled great however. :)

Place the tri-tip steak in a large zip-lock freezer bag, and pour the marinade in. It should sit in the fridge at least 4 hours, if not overnight. When you are ready to cook the meat, take it out of the fridge early. You want to grill a steak from room temperature. A tri-tip is best cooked "low and slow", so you can get away with a temperature a little colder.

Spread the coals around the edge of the grill, leaving some space in the middle. I let my coals burn a little longer before I put the meat on when I grill tri-tip. You want to make sure there are no flare-ups that can burn your meat. Cook for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the steak. I turn it once at 20 minutes, again at 40 minutes, and then I rotate and flip at 50 minutes and 1 hour. This gets you a nice brown edge with a light pink center. Perfect.

I used this recipe and the flavor stayed pretty well. I could taste the Guinness in the meat. Add some flour tortillas, some fresh salsa, guacamole, onions, and (Tillamook) grated cheddar cheese, and you have a great tri-tip taco.

Be sure to let me know how this works for you. It is among my favorite grill marinades.

Biscuit Pizza

When I was a kid my mom always found creative ways to make a cheap meal. There were 7 mouths to feed (including my parents), and a little money had to go a long way. One of the things she would do is have us make our own biscuit pizzas for fun. We would get to pick whatever toppings were available, from breakfast sausage, to pepperoni, to olives and mushrooms, and whatever else we had on hand. I told my wife about this idea, and she kicked it up a few notches. The recipe follows:

• Pillsbury Biscuits
• Trader Joe's Marinara Sauce
• Mozzarella Cheese
• (optional)Spicy Italian Sausage
• (optional)Pepperoni
• (optional)Fresh Basil
• (optional)Any other favorite topping

The quantities needed depends on the amount you are serving. These pizzas are as big as biscuits, so a little goes a long way.

Cook the sausage, sautee any onions or other vegetables as needed.

Take the biscuits out of the can, and spread thin like a pizza crust. Add the marinara sauce. Add toppings and cheese liberally.

Bake in oven or toaster oven until biscuits are golden/cheese is melted.

Add grated Parmesan cheese and crushed red pepper to taste and you are good to go.

This meal is really cheap and tastes great. Enjoy.

Tri-Tip Quesadillas

See the post "Slow-Cooker Tri-Tip Recipe" for instructions on making the meat. With every great recipe comes the chance for great leftovers. This is how I made a quesadilla from the leftovers of my slow-cooker tri-tip.

• Slow Cooked Tri-Tip
• Medium or Sharp Cheddar Cheese (I recommend Tillamook)
• Flour Tortillas
• your favorite hot sauce

Quesadillas are really basic. Butter a frying pan and place a tortilla in the pan with a low flame. Heat the tortilla briefly and add the meat. Shake the pan every so often to keep the tortilla from burning. When the meat has begun heating up, add the cheddar cheese. Fold the tortilla in half and cook on each side. The quesadilla is done when the cheese is melted. Repeat for desired number of quesadillas.

Add some hot sauce, slice into wedges, and serve.

Tri-Tip Salad Recipe

See the post Slow Cooker Tri-Tip Recipe for the meat recipe. With every great recipe comes the chance for great leftover recipes. This is how I made a great salad from the leftovers.

• Slow Cooked Tri-Tip
• Lettuce (your choice of type, We use anything but Iceberg)
• Medium or Sharp Cheddar Cheese (I recommend Tillamook)
• Red Onion (1/2 onion)
• Sour Cream
• Salsa

Chop the cheese into small cubes. Chop the onions into small chunks. Reheat the tri-tip. Spread the lettuce on a plate, and add all the ingredients in order of preference. I like to toss the salad with everything but the tri-tip, and then add the meat to the top once it is thoroughly mixed. Add the sour cream and salsa and you are good to go.

This works well with a low-carb diet.

Slow Cooker Tri-Tip Recipe

• (1) Tri-Tip steak (trimmed)
• (1) Jar of your favorite salsa (Safeway Select "Garlic Lover's" Salsa works great)
• (1) large can Sun Vista Pinto Beans
• Cayenne Pepper (to taste)
• Garlic Powder (to taste)
• Chili Powder (to taste)
• Salt and Black Pepper (to taste)

If you want to make burritos or tacos with the meat, add the following to your shopping list:

• Medium to Sharp Cheddar Cheese
• Sour Cream
• Flour Tortillas
• Hot sauce/salsa of choice

If your tri-tip isn't trimmed, then start by trimming some of the fat off. Next add some garlic powder, salt and black pepper (to taste). Put tri-tip in slow cooker. Add the jar of salsa. Drain the can of pinto beans, and add to the slow cooker.

Set the slow cooker to low, and cook for 9 hours.

Once the tri-tip is cooked, add the cayenne pepper, more garlic powder, chili powder, and more salt or black pepper, to taste.

Now that the meat is done, throw it into some flour tortillas with sour cream, cheese and salsa, and you have yourself a fantastic burrito.

I am particularly fond of this one, so be sure to tell me how you like it.

Scrambled Egg Sandwich

One of the cheapest, tastiest sandwiches you can make on the fly is the classic Scrambled Egg sandwich. The ingredients are simple, and yet the taste is outstanding.

• Eggs
• Salt
• Pepper
• Mayonnaise
• White Bread (no wheat bread substitute)

In the past, my sandwiches have all been salt and pepper free. My wife added them tonight, and it worked pretty well. The most crucial ingredients are the White Bread and the Mayo. Wheat Bread just isn't the same.

Just scramble the eggs with the salt and pepper, slather the bread with the mayo, and you are done. These sandwiches rarely fail to hit the spot.

Bacon Lettuce and Tomatoes - What A Combo

Tonight for dinner we had BLTs, the classic Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich. Ours had slightly more than that, but the basic ingredients are still the same.

Ingredients:

• Bacon
• Lettuce
• Tomato
• Mustard
• Mayonnaise
• Bread

My wife normally only uses Mayo as a condiment. I grew up with only Mustard. Tonight I had both, and I must say it tastes better that way. There are a number of ways to spruce up this classic sandwich, and many are pretty tasty.

In the past I have added sliced turkey breasts to the BLT. If you grill it slightly in a toaster oven it comes out especially nice. The same goes for thin-sliced roast beef.

I must say the tomatoes were especially good tonight. Tomatoes have been scarce since the salmonella scare a few weeks ago. California was cleared pretty quickly, but many fast food places won't carry them. I can't wait to try the ones we are growing in our salsa garden.

For the most part, I leave the recipe alone. There is a reason this is so popular on its own. It is easy to make and tastes really good.

Great Tri-Tip Marinade

We grilled a tri-tip steak for dinner tonight and it was pretty good. This steak is probably among the best of all the steaks we have made recently. We found a recipe from AllRecipes.com, and made some modifications. The modified version follows:

• 1 bottle Guinness
• 4 tbsp crushed Garlic
• 5 tbsp Brown Sugar
• 1 tbsp pepper
• 1 tbsp Soy Sauce
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
• Emeril's Essence seasoning

This time we weren't grilling on a whim, so we spent some time to do it right. We made the marinade this morning. Before marinading, we sprinkled the Emeril seasoning. The meat soaked in the marinade for about 8 hours. Once the meat was on the grill, my wife boiled the marinade to burn off any meat contaminants, and we used it to baste the meat as it grilled. The meat had a lot of fat on one side, and my wife trimmed most of it off. What was left, added to the brown sugar in the marinade, was enough to cause some serious flame-ups. I had to monitor the meat closely.

The meat was grilled for an hour, rotated and moved from time to time to prevent the flame-ups from charring the meat. Eventually I moved the coals off to the side and slow cooked the meat for the final half hour. The meat was so tender from the marinade that the charred sections slid right off. This was a very tasty steak. Add some grilled corn and my family's baked beans recipe, and we had a great meal.

I think next time we will grill for 45 minutes instead of the hour, but otherwise it came out exactly as we wanted. Be sure to give this one a try.

Originally posted on my blog "SurfJedi's Musings".

Surfer J's Ultimate Roast Beef Sandwich

I made a sandwich tonight that was so good I had to write about it. I am calling it Surfer J's Ultimate Roast Beef Sandwich. I am not normally a sandwich guy, so when I do eat them I go all out to make sure they are pretty darn good. Tonight was no exception. In fact, this was probably one of the most successful concoctions I have come up with yet. Now I probably hyped it too much, so hopefully you agree that this is a pretty good meal.

I used the following ingredients:

• Deli Roast Beef from my local grocery store
• Tillamook Sharp Cheddar cheese pre/deli sliced
• Cayenne Pepper
• Cajun Seasoning
• Garlic Powder
• Chili Powder
• 1/2 Avocado (lightly salted)
• 2 slices red onion
• 2 slices vine-ripe tomato
• Mayonaise
• Deli Mustard
• Whole Wheat Bread

I first mixed a small portion of the garlic powder, chili powder, cayenne pepper and Cajun seasoning in a bowl for even distribution. I laid a layer of roast beef on a foil-lined broiler pan, and spread the spices over the layer. I added another layer of beef, and added more Cajun seasoning and cayenne pepper on the top. I intended the main spices to seep up from the layer below, so I only needed my favorite ingredients on top. I put the broiler pan in my toaster oven. My toaster has heat settings and cooking method options. I put it on max heat (450º) and set the method to broil.

As the meat heated I sliced the tomato, onion, and avocado. As the meat cooked a very pleasant aroma began spreading through the kitchen. At this point my son was trying to help my wife make cookies, and I was delayed slightly in pulling the meat out. It was slightly overcooked for what I had intended, but it turned out having a crisping effect on the edges which tasted pretty good in the end.

I pulled the meat out and placed my cheese slices on top, then put it back in to the toaster. I lowered the heat to 250º. While the cheese was melting I put the mayo on both slices of bread, and added more Cajun seasoning on top of the mayo. I added the deli mustard to one slice of bread and the onions and tomato on one slice.

When I pulled out the roast beef there was a nice layer of juice at the bottom. I put the roast beef on the bread, and added the avocado to the top of it. I put a dash of salt on the avocado and closed the sandwich.

As I said before, this turned out really well. I think if I had to change anything, I might try some horseradish or Cholula/Tapatillo hot sauce. Some bacon might have been pretty good too, but I was working with what I had on hand. I would highly recommend this sandwich. Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

Originally posted on my blog "SurfJedi's Musings".