The short version
I’m from Santa Paula, in Ventura County, deep in the 805. There was always a grill going at my house, and tri tip was the beef of my childhood: backyards, team fundraisers, the grills that showed up at every gathering. I’m a BBQ pitmaster, and I don’t believe there’s only one right way to cook this cut. I still cook tri tip all the time, and it still tastes like home.
The 805
Tri tip started as a Santa Maria tradition up the coast, and it spilled south into Ventura County long before I came along. By the time I was a kid it was just what you cooked: a couple of tri tips over the coals, salt, pepper, and garlic, sliced thin and piled on a roll or a paper plate with beans. I learned it the way most people from the 805 did, by standing next to whoever was running the grill and eventually being handed the tongs.
Santa Maria is the birthplace and I respect that the whole way through. My own connection comes from farther south, where tri tip was already part of backyard life. That’s the part you can’t fake and the reason this site exists. I’m not writing about a cut I discovered last year. I’m writing about the food I grew up on, carried with me, and have cooked a few hundred times since.
Why this site
Tri tip deserves better than a paragraph buried in a general grilling guide. It has its own history, its own slicing technique, its own temperature targets, its own argument with brisket. So I gave it its own place. It’s part of California, part of the 805, part of my life.
The root is the traditional plate: red oak, salt-pepper-garlic, pinquito beans, and I teach that straight. But tri tip outgrew its hometown. It travels. It takes a carne asada marinade, a coffee rub, a Korean glaze. Origin respected, never gatekept. That evolution is the thread this whole site follows, and honestly it mirrors mine: from home, out into the world, still cooking the same cut.
What I cook, and how I know
Tri tip is my home base, but I cook the whole spread. Over the years I’ve cooked this cut just about every way there is: grill, smoke, reverse sear, oven, even sous vide. What I love about it is that it’s a steak and a roast at the same time, so there’s always a call to make on how to treat it.
That competition stretch, on a team called Four-Q, gave me a deeper respect for process, consistency, timing, texture, and the small details that separate decent barbecue from the kind people remember. That’s the standard I hold this site to. If a method or a number is here, I’ve done it myself.
BBQ Junkie and where this is headed
BBQ Tri Tip is part of BBQ Junkie, my broader home for outdoor cooking: recipes, gear, technique, and live-fire food across the whole BBQ world. This site is where I go deep on the one cut I grew up on. Same me behind both, same standard, same point of view. For my work beyond barbecue, that’s over at Luis Ramirez.
This is a long-term build, not a quick stack of posts. The goal is a real body of work on tri tip: the heritage, the methods, the evolution, useful enough to last and deep enough to become something bigger down the road. Follow along on Instagram.
Get in touch
Got a question, a correction, or a tri tip spot I should know about? Hit the contact page or email me at hello@bbqtritip.com.