This is one of the recipes that we made at our grilling demo earlier this summer at The Great Backyard Place, Knoxville's Saber and Grill Dome dealer.  It's a Sonoran Beef Tri-Tip Slider and we served it with my favorite way to do corn - elote aka Mexican street corn.

There's no avocado pictured because I'm forgetful.  It was sliced and sitting off to the side the whole time.  

Sonoran Beef Tri-Tip Sliders

Published 07/21/2016

We season beef tri-tips with our basic beef rub and layer it with our fajita seasoning, then reverse sear it on the grill. Sliced thin and served on toasted slider rolls with avocado, roasted pepper mayo, and a tomato based hot sauce.

Ingredients

• 1 ea Beef tri-tip 2-2.5 lbs
• 1 1/2 tablespoon Beef or steak seasoning 
• 1 1/2 tablespoon Fajita seasoning 
• 8 ea Slider rolls 
• 1 ea Avocado peeled and sliced into thin wedges
• 2 tablespoon Roasted red pepper 
• 1 cup Mayonnaise 
• 1/4 teaspoon Cumin 
• 1/4 cup Tomato based hot sauce

Instructions

1. Finely mince the roasted red pepper and whisk into the mayonnaise with the cumin. Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.
2. Season the tri-tip all over with the beef rub and then the fajita rub. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 6-8 hours before serving.
3. Set up your grill for indirect heat and preheat to low heat - 250-275°f. Unwrap the trip tip and slow roast the tri-tip until it is an internal temperature of 127°f - about 1 hour. For the Saber IR Grill, this will be turning on the far left burner on high and letting preheat for 20 minutes. Place the tri-tip on the upper level on the far right side and cook until done.
4. When the tri-tip reaches an internal temperature of 127°f, remove it from the grill and allow to rest until the internal temperature stops rising (probably around 133-135°f or about 7-10 minutes).
5. Crank the grill tempature to very hot. With the Saber IR Grill, your far left burner is already there. Place the tri-tip over very hot heat and sear for about 1 minute per side. Remove from grill.
6. Toast the slide buns on the grill. Slice the tri-tip thinly against the grain. For each slider, top the bun bottom with a few slices of the beef and avocado. Drizzle with the hot sauce and slather the top bun with the roasted pepper mayo.

Yield: 8 sliders

I used our recipe for Beef Rub and Fajita Seasoning but you can use your own favorite recipes or buy commercially available seasonings if that floats your boat.  If you want a more basic beef rub than my recipe, you can always just mix 3 parts kosher salt, 2 parts black pepper and 1 part granulated garlic. For the hot sauce, I used Albukirky's Anchonero Hot BBQ Sauce.

Just getting set up in the morning, you can already see dark skies to the West.  We have a 100% record at The Great Backyard Place.  Three demos and three rain outs.

A better view of the Saber 500 (Cast) that I used.  As I wrote in detail in my initial review, this is the best gas grill that I have ever used.  It's well built and easy to assemble.  I love the divided fire box that let's you truly cook at 3 different temperatures at the same time.  The unique grate system yields pure infrared heat that produces excellent food.  Sure, I'm typically a charcoal guy but I really enjoy cooking on this grill.

Tri-Tip typically have a boomerang shape and the grain of the meat runs 2-3 different ways.  You need to be aware of this so when you a slicing the roast, you can cut against the grain (90 degrees across it).  If you cut with the grain, you will have long muscle fibers that will be make the meat tough to chew.  I usually slice it into two pieces right where the red line is and then slice against the grain from there.

Meat boomerang!  Seasoned and ready to go onto the grill.

Use a remote probe thermometer to monitor the temperature of the tri-tip while slow roasting so you get it perfectly done.

Notice the maximum or peak temperature of 135°f.  First, if I was serving this just as slices, I'd pull the meat around 125°f but for sandwiches I take it a nudge further like this.  Second, it is important for the internal temperature to start falling before doing the sear.  That gets the energy going in the opposite direction so the 2-3 minute sear won't cook the inside any more, it will just put color and flavor on the outside.

I love tri-tip.  It's almost as tender as a beef tenderloin but it has more beef flavor.

Slicing the tri-tip at the demo.

Annnnnnnd then the rains came.  We were able to feed folks and talk about the grills for about 2 hours before it started raining so it wasn't a complete rain out.

Deliciousness!

We weren't sure whether we were going to do this recipe on the Saber grill or the Grill Dome kamado grill until that morning.  The recipe works excellent on either grill.  If I was doing this on a kamado grill I'd preheat it to 250°f with a heat diffuser (plate setter, stone/spider) and slow roast it for the same time.  Then pull the heat diffuser out, bring up the temp, and sear the roast off just like we did on the Saber.

[FTC Standard Disclosure]  I received my Saber 500 for free for review but receive no other compensation from Saber.  To find out more about this premium gas grill, check out their website.