When it comes to making tacos, you have lots of options when it comes to your choice of protein and how you want to cook it. For this recipe, a lovely tri-tip steak was chosen. After removing the fat cap, the steak was seasoned with a custom Coffee/Chili rub before being seared and then finished cooking over indirect heat to retain a nice, consistent medium-rare doneness throughout the entire steak.
Tap/Click above to watch the recipe or scroll below for the steps: Video – BBQGuys.com
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Step 1: This taco recipe started with a full tri-tip steak. There was some silverskin on the steak, which needed to be removed as this was going to make it harder to dice the steak later for the tacos.
Step 2: The whole fat cap was removed from the trip-tip as grilling and the relatively short cooking time wasn’t going to render down that fat, therefore, it was best to remove it.
Step 3: A Coffee/Chilli rub was prepared for the tri-tip, which was 1 Tbsp ground dark-roast coffee, 1 Tbsp light brown sugar, 1 Tbsp ancho chile powder, 2 tsp ground cumin, 2 tsp kosher salt, and finally 1 tsp of smoked sweet paprika.
Step 4: The Coffee/Chile rub was laid pretty thick over the tri-tip steak, which being a large cut of meat, it could take it.
Step 5: With all of the Coffee/Chili rub all over the tri-tip, it was left to marinade in the fridge. Ideally, you would be able to season the steak the day before to get the best flavor profile.
Step 6: To cook the tri-tip, the pellet grill (Weber SmokeFire EX4) was preheated to 550 degrees ready to sear the steak over direct heat as the first part of the cooking process.
Step 7: The tri-trip steak went onto the grates at 550 degrees for a direct heat sear to start.
Step 8: After 5 minutes of searing, the tri-tip was flipped over to show a nice bit of charging. After another 5 minutes of direct heat cooking, the tri-tip steak was cooked with indirect heat over a water pan with the pellet grill temperature reduced to 400 degrees.
Step 9: When the tri-tip reached an internal temperature of 117 degrees, it was ready to come off the pellet grill and left to rest for 30 minutes, where its internal temperature would rise to 130 degrees (Medium-Rare).
Step 10: For the veggies on the tacos, some red and green peppers and red onion were chopped up and then placed on the pellet grill to cook.
Step 11: The Weber ‘Veggie Basket’ was used to make it easy to cook the chopped pepper/onion, and there are lots of similar accessories on the market.
Step 12: After resting for 30 minutes, the tri-tip was ready to slice. The results were pretty much perfect; it had a nice seared outer texture but a pink center without browning around the edges.
Step 13: You’ll then want to slice and dice the smoked tri-tip into bite-sized chunks, ready to go onto the tacos.
Step 14: To build the taco, lightly grill a corn tortilla and lay some sour cream with Adobo sauce.
Step 15: Finally, load the taco with the diced tri-tip and the grilled peppers and onions. You could also top it off with some Guacamole and maybe some sliced radishes for a bit more texture. Fantastic!
Hi, I’m Chris Scott. I started PelHeat.com back in 2007 and I have a background in pellet manufacturing. PelHeat.com is an educational resource on BBQ pellets, pellet grills & smokers. Check out our Pellet Grill & Smoker Database.
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