Marinate, over night in the frige...in a zip lock bag...1/2 cup of red wine. 1 T soy sauce, 2 tsps worchestershire, couple of cloves of crushed garlic, 1 T brown sugar ( or honey) and 1/2 cup of water.
Turn the bag when you think of it...
When you are ready to cook, remove meat from the bag, pat dry with paper towel and rub with olive oil and grill medium rare.
Slice thin across the grain and enjoy!
Linda C

We marinate in a soy/bourbon/ginger/garlic/sugar sauce, up to overnight, then grill it. Slice thin. Wonderful!

If you don't have a sous vide setup, or a Jaccard tool, or chemical tenderizer, the following are three important considerations for this relatively tough cut of meat:

1. Let the meat get up to room temnperture before grilling, you can gain close to 40F advantage comparing to just refrigerated meat.

2. A good probe thermometer.

3. The resting time for the meat after grilling.

dcarch

Thank you all. I had thought this might be more of an oven roast (high heat to rarish, )but I see from googling and your suggestions that it is almost always grilled.
I have it marinating now.
Thanks!

Tri-tip is actually bottom sirloin, and it's relatively tough but has a wonderful flavor. Sirloin is one of my favorite steaks, you have to chew a bit more but the taste is excellent.

We also marinate it and grill it until rare, then slice thinly. It makes a great steak salad if there are any leftovers.

it's also good cooked low and slow like brisket, we've done tri-tip in the smoker and it's good that way too.

Annie

Wow; reading references to a tri-tip being tough is shocking to me! Undoubted it's our favorite cut of meat, overall, and the most tender! Hard to believe we're talking about the same piece of meat. I'm in California and have been making it for 30 years, probably. For the last 8 years, we have been buying it from Costco and still think it's an outstanding cut of meat. I just season it right out of the refrigerator (I don't warm it up on counter) and bbq it over medium heat in gas bbq to med. rare - maybe 40 min. or so, depending on thickness. Let it rest a few minutes and then slice it with an electric knife very thinly as we like it. But, we're also very careful to slice it ACROSS the grain and you have to look carefully as the grain is always slightly askew compared to the shape of the meat. Starting at the narrow tip to our right, we usually have to angle the knife further to the right (like '2:00 o'clock') and continue cutting it like that. IE, we never cut it straight across the tip but clearly at an angle and continue in the same manner all the way to the wide end. We find it to be fabulous and extremely tasty. I get RAVES each and every time I make it for company. (I use straight McCormick/Schilling 'Season All' as my only seasoning.)

It was very very good. I grilled it extremely rare, and over a few days, pan seared thick slices to eat.
I do that with most meats as I am like it rare, Dad well done and dh in between.

It was marinated for two days, also.

I just happened to see it at the grocery store, have never seen one before and it was quite cheap per pound.

"-----Wow; reading references to a tri-tip being tough is shocking to me! ---"

I do, as many people would. I did say "relative". It is not fork-tender kind of cut of meat.

If you don't slice it thin across the grain and if you overcook it a little, tri-tip gets very tough.

dcarch

I'd say tri-tip is at least as tender as a top sirloin, or a NY strip, with almost as much 'beef' flavor as a ribeye or chuckeye. It's not fork tender, but melt-in-your-mouth nonetheless. I've never had to marinate it. I simply sprinkle with Kosher salt and pepper, and grill to medium-rare.

One caveat: I have the tri-tip sliced into steaks (about 1 inch). Since there are only two tri-tips per cow, this is a way to stretch what can be difficult to find.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Unorthodox Epicure: Confessions of an Aspiring Food Snob