Tips on smoking a tri-tip

After some of my previous disastrous attempts at using my Brinkmann Smoke 'N Grill, it was time to rethink my approach. For starters, I'm a griller. Smoking meats is all new to me and the key appears to be patience. Don't lift the lid to check, rely on internal meat temperatures (rather than the griller's method of the "touch test") and give yourself more time than you think you'll need.

Roasts that should have taken five hours, have ended up pushing my patience at the 12-hour mark. I did what any good investigative journalist would do -- research. Why was my timing so far off? When using my Weber charcoal kettle grill set up as a smoker, I have no issues. The timing (45 minutes to an hour per pound) is usually accurate. The answer was obvious -- temperature control.

Looking at the environment, I noticed my smoker sat in direct sun most of the day, which could throw off the temperature gauge. Since I haven't replaced it yet, the gauge simply reads, "Cool," "Ideal" and "Hot." Other bloggers mentioned getting out of the wind. A breeze does blow across that patio, so I moved it to a sheltered area out of the sun and wind. Other bloggers recommended filling the water pan with sand, so I did just that. You can pick up non-toxic, all natural, low-dust sand at any hardware store for about $5.

New location, no water. Check. Now, the other problem I seem to be having is with the charcoal pan. I've been tossing in unlit coals and soaked wood chunks about every hour. What I've noticed when cleaning the pan afterward is a large number of unlit coals hidden in the ash.

I found a method for coals that seems to work over a longer period of time. Set up a ring of unlit charcoal around the outer walls of the pan. Dump lit coals in the center. Place large pieces of unlit lump charcoal on top of that. This method provides longer burning coals and more of them so later, when adding, there seems to be less ash.

I placed a ring of unlit charcoal around the rim of the charcoal pan. Remove all the grates and water pan so you can dump coals directly down the smoker into the pan. I light mine on my Weber grill.

With all this in place, at 7:30 a.m., I started to smoke a tri-tip. Why so early? As I mentioned, I haven't had much luck with the Brinkmann and wanted to give myself a 12-hour window (which is about how long it's taken me in the past).

I rubbed the meat with Stubbs BBQ seasoning and prepared my coals and water pan as I mentioned earlier. In the thickest part of the meat, I placed the thermometer. According to the Brinkmann cook book, 140 degrees is rare, 160 degrees is medium and 170 degrees is well done.

Place the meat on the grate directly over the sand (water pan), with the thermometer facing the charcoal access door. This way, you can check the temperature easily without lifting the lid.

I toss in soaked wood chunks to add smoke flavor.

After three hours, the tri-tip was done. Yes. It was done at 10:30 a.m. I didn't know what to do, so I added veggies to the top rack (since I still had hot coals). They took about an hour.

Dinner is ready - very early. I think with these new methods in place, I'll be able to more accurately estimate timing for dinner. For us, the 160 degrees seemed to be a little too done, so next time, I'm shooting for 140 to 150.

Happy smoking!