Cooking Tri-Tip at home

Tri-Tip is sometimes an underrated cut of meat. Its marbled fat helps to create a flavour profile that is intense and unique, and here at Fazenda we love it.

In this week's blog, our Executive Chef Fran Martinez wanted to share one of his favourite Tri-Tip recipes with you, Fazendeiros.

Tri-Tip & Cheese Sauce

'Today we are doing a very simple recipe, which is great for the cold winter days. This time, we're using rump tail; an affordable cut that can produce great results if it's treated the right way. Tri-tip is the American name for this muscular cut, which is part of the rump itself. Usually speaking, they weigh between 1kg and 1.4kg. This recipe is one of my favourites, and here's how you can make it too'

Ingredients (serves 4)

For the meat:

1 whole Tri-tip (approx 1.2Kg)

6 garlic cloves

1 rosemary stalk

3 tbsp rock salt

 

For the cheese sauce:

200ml double cream

1 tbsp black pepper

100g salted butter

100g cheese powder

100g cheddar cheese

100g Red Leicester cheese

Method:

Take the meat out of the fridge about 1 hour prior to cooking. The meat will cook much more evenly from room temperature. Pre-heat the oven to 220°C degrees.

Using a small knife, make some punctures in the meat to insert the garlic cloves and fresh rosemary inside the meat.

As always when cooking meat, I recommend the use of a meat probe thermometer. Using one of these, we will be looking for a core temperature of 54°C degrees for a medium rare cut, while we have a crackling fat on the top. Once the oven has heated up, the meat will take about 25 minutes to cook.

While we're cooking our meat in the oven, we can prepare our cheese sauce. For this we just need a small casserole dish, to put in the middle of the table later, like a fondue.

On a low flame, add all the ingredients into the casserole dish and slowly stir continuously to avoid the sauce catching on the bottom of the pan. This will take about 10 minutes to cook.

Once the meat is cooked to your liking, take it out and leave it to rest for about 10 minutes covered with foil. After that, the meat can be sliced and served to your guests.

Enjoying your Tri-tip fondue

My favourite way to eat this feast is with everyone around the table sharing, with everyone dipping the meat straight into the cheese fondue, but this is your choice of course! Any other beef, pork or chicken will perfectly match with this versatile sauce too.

If you want to give it a try before cooking it at home, this sauce will be available on our new Autumnal gourmet salad bar from the 22nd October.

Please tag us on Facebook, Instagram  if you try this recipe, as we - especially Fran - love to see your creations, Fazendeiros!