Indirect Grilled Tri Tip Recipe

We take the iconic tri tip, seasoned with a beef rub, and cook it indirect (aka two zone grilling) on a charcoal grill. That means we set up a hot side of the grill where we bank the hot charcoal, and a cool side of the grill with no direct heat. We place smoke wood over the hot coals and the tri tip over the side with no direct heat. Close the lid and the charcoal grill is now a smoker. We cook the tri tip indirect until they hit about 110F-115F. Then we sear over the hot coals to get that gorgeous and tasty flavor crust. Finally, we let the tri tip rest a bit and then slice and serve. This is our Indirect Grilled Tri Tip Recipe.

Tri Tip was originally a throw away piece of meat. Not literally. None of the beef is thrown away, but after the sirloin steaks were carved off, this little triangular piece of meat from the sirloin primal was ground into burger. Enter a rancher from the Santa Maria region of California. He had cowboys to feed who tended to his herds. He saw these 1.5-2.5 pound sirloin roasts tossed into the grinder and asked what they were all about. The butcher explained it was a weird shaped but with muscle fibers moving two ways through it making it complicated to carve across the grain.

The rancher saw some value there and got sirloin steak at around ground beef prices and took all the roasts the butcher had. Out on the cattle drives, the tri tips were simply seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic and paprika and then cooked on open air cookers over live fire, usually the red oak that was so prominent in the region. The grill grates were raised and lowered to control temps on what we now call Santa Maria grills. Good Santa Maria grills are pretty expensive and hard to find in most of the country if you actually want to touch and feel one. Sure, you can order one online, but creative picture editing can make a cheap grill look a lot better. Since most don’t have a Santa Maria grill, we decided show how to cook these beauties on whatever it is you have on the back deck or patio. 

Here are some other tri tip recipes if you are so inclined to know your options.

• Here is a traditionally grilled tri tip on a Santa Maria grill. 
• But what if you don’t have a Santa Maria cooker, well then you can cook tri tip on a gas grill. 
• And here is tri tip cooked mainly on a pellet grill.
• Don’t sleep on this tri tip, chimichurri sando.

Indirect Grilled Tri Tip Recipe Ingredients

• 2 tri tip roasts (we procured ours from Korte Meats in Highland Illinois)
• SPG seasoning (Salt Pepper Garlic)
• Paprika – optional

These roasts are gorgeous. Sirloin shouldn’t be this well marbled. I got these at Korte Meats in Highland Illinois. This place is a bit of a hike for me. It’s one of those weird things; I wish it was closer to my house and at the same time not. I’d love to have this gorgeous meat available all the time, but I would also spend so much if it was. And it’s not like they are expensive. They charge pretty much what my grocery store charges, maybe even a little less, but the quality is soooo much better. 

Trim Those Tri Tips

There are two schools of thought on trimming tri tip. 1) Clean off all the excess fat and cook the meat alone. 2) Leave the fat because fat tastes good. I’m sort of in the middle; I trim the big stuff but leave the little stuff.

Pro Tip ~ That little bit of skin that looks like silver skin is not silver skin and will melt away during cooking. 

As for the optional paprika mentioned above, I went with a little paprika in this cook:

After trimming, season all the way around including those skinny edges:

Now that our tri tips are seasoned and ready for the heat, let’s get the grill going.

Prep the Grill

For this cook, we are going to do two zone grilling, aka indirect grilling, with a hot side of the grill with the hot coals and smoke wood, and a cool side of the grill with no direct heat where the meat will go for most of this session. The process is to cook the sirloin roasts indirect until they get to about 10F-20F short of the desired final temperature. Then to sear the beef over the hot coals to get that tasty flavor crust and raise that temp up to the desired doneness. 

I’m cooking these on my American Made Grills, Hybrid Ovation Grill. It’s a hybrid fuel grill in that it can use gas, charcoal, or even real wood, or a combination of all three, as you will see in this recipe. I use the gas for about 1-2 minutes to light the charcoal and then turn it off and let the charcoal heat the chamber. I let the charcoal heat up the smoke wood enough for it to smolder and provide some smoke flavor to the beef. 

Once the wood starts to smolder, put the wood chunks off to the edge of the heat so it continues to smolder and not flat out burn:

There’s better smoke from a smolder than there is from a full on burn. It’s a bit of a balancing act, to find the perfect spot for the wood to smolder. Too close to the heat and it will just burn. Too far and the wood doesn’t get hot enough to smolder. This is the art of fire management and takes some practice. 

How to Indirect Grill Tri Tip

Trim and season the tri tip roast then build a fire to one side of the grill. Put the smoke wood over the hot fire and the sirloin roasts on the other side. Close the lid and allow the heat and smoke to bring the tri tip up to within 10F-20F of the desired doneness. Then place the beef roasts over the top of the hot coals to get that tasty flavor crust on the outside and heat up that last 10F-20F. Remove from the heat, allow to rest for about 10 minutes, slice and serve. Be careful in that the tri tip has two different muscles that run in two different directions, so slicing is a bit tricky. More on that below. 

We are looking at a target temp inside the grill around 250F for this cook and the American Made Grills Hybrid Ovation has hit that perfectly:

Place the tri tip a little off the heat so it doesn’t start browning right away. We want it to take on some smoke before it browns because once it browns, it’s not taking on any more smoke:

Here’s a closer shot with more smoke after about 20 minutes:

Here we are about 40 minutes in:

Time to sear:

Time to get the hot side hotter. Open the lid and let the coals take in as much air as they can. Maybe throw on some more charcoal if you need to. Leave the tri tips off the heat while the fire warms up. We don’t want the beef to keep cooking while we stoke the coals:

Place one of the beef tri tip roasts over to the hot fire:

Pro Tip ~ Edge to edge browning is better than grill lines.

Sure grill lines are great, but the more browning the better.

Having both isn’t bad either:

After browning the other side:

This one is just about perfect for me:

Move the tri tip over to the side of the grill with no direct heat and sear the other tri tip over the hot side of the grill:

Now that our tri tips have reached our desired doneness, remove them from the grill and let them rest for a few minutes.

Now that it is time to slice, things get weird with this cut of beef. Two muscles collide with meat fibers going two different ways. To show the way the grain runs, I took this pic from above:

And zoomed in a bit and did this diagram:

To properly carve a tri tip, follow the white dotted line first. Then, cut the two halves perpendicular to the green and blue arrow lines. 

This is the first slice:

Before we cut across the grain, gotta show off the doneness of the roast:

I like rare steak, but tri tip to me, when done rare, is stringy.

So I cook tri tips beyond rare to the medium rare range, and sometimes even medium. 

And here’s the other tri tip:

Here is one of the tri tips carved across the grain:

Indirect Grilled Tri Tip Recipe Recap

I’m a sucker for a good tri tip. I love making it and serving it like steak. I love reverse searing it and putting it straight in the fridge for chili the next day. It is a very versatile cut of beef. I highly recommend it. 

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Recipe Card

Print Recipe

Indirect Grilled Tri Tip Recipe

In this indirect grilled tri tip recipe we trim and season two tri tips, smoke them indirect before searing off for that wonderful flavor crust.

Prep Time5 minutes mins

Cook Time45 minutes mins

Resting Time5 minutes mins

Course: Entree, Main Course, Steak Roast

Cuisine: American, American Fare, Beef, Grilling, North American, Traditional American

Keyword: Beef Tri Tip, Charcoal Grill, Grilled Tri Tip, Grilled Tri Tip Recipe, Indirect Grilled, Indirect Grilled Tri Tip, Indirect Grilling, reverse seared, Reverse Seared Tri Tip, Reverse Seared Tri Tip Recipe, Tri Tip, Tri Tip Roast, Two Zone Grilling

Ingredients

• 2 Tri tips 1.5-2.5 pounds each
• SPG Seasoning Salt Pepper Garlic
• Paprika Optional

Instructions

• Trim any excessive fat off the sirloin roasts, but don't stress about the "silver" skin as it just isn't silver skin. Then season the tri tips, top and bottom and along the skinny edge with the SPG seasoning and optional paprika.

  

• Prepare the charcoal grill (or gas grill) for two zone grilling with hot coals (or hot burner) on one side and nothing on the other. Place a chunk of smoke wood over the hot side and the seasoned beef tri tip over the side with no direct heat. Close the lid and let the steak smoke and come up slowly in temp.

  

• When the tri tips reach about 10F-20F below your desired final doneness, remove them from the grill and crank up the hot side. When the temp of the hot side exceeds 500F, sear the tri tip on both sides over the hot coals (hot burner). Once you get a nice flavor crust on the outside and bring the internal temp up that final 10F-15F, remove the roasts from the grill and rest for about 5 minutes.

  

• Slice the tri tip in half where the two muscles meat (dotted line) and then cut perpendicular to the arrow lines.

  

• Pro Tip ~ Serve with chimichurri for an extra blast of flavor

  

Video

Scott Thomas

Scott Thomas, the Original Grillin’ Fool, was sent off to college with a suitcase and a grill where he overcooked, undercooked and burned every piece of meat he could find. After thousands of failures, and quite a few successes, nearly two decades later he started a website to show step by step, picture by picture, foolproof instructions on how to make great things out of doors so that others don’t have to repeat the mistakes he’s made on the grill.

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BBQ Grilling

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This article was initially published on: September 27, 2026