pairingSanta Maria tri-tip
also: Tri-tip · Santa Maria steak · Triangle tip · Newport steak
A triangular two-to-five-pound piece of bottom sirloin, rolled in salt, pepper and garlic, grilled over red oak coals to medium-rare and sliced across the grain. In its home valley it arrives with pinquito beans, salsa, green salad and buttered French bread grilled on the same fire.
The story Cited
The barbecue is older than the cut. Californio ranchers fed their vaqueros each spring from oak-coal pits, and the Santa Maria Club ran a stag barbecue for up to 700 people a month from 1931. Top sirloin was the meat. In the late 1950s a market manager in Santa Maria put a triangular piece that usually went to the grinder on a rotisserie instead, and by the 1960s the town had a cut of its own.
How it is done Cited
Grill directly over red oak, fat side up, turning once; pull at 130–135 °F and let it rest before slicing. The grain changes direction inside the muscle, so the knife has to change with it. Central California butchers leave the fat cap on; butchers elsewhere trim it.
Today Cited
Sold country-wide now, and still the default thing to cook at a Santa Maria Valley fundraiser, rodeo or school benefit.
Facts
| course | main |
|---|---|
| country | United States |
| region | Santa Maria Valley, California |
| where | 34.9530, -120.4360 (town) · OpenStreetMap · open in maps Cited |
| confidence | high · updated 2026-09-16 |
Numbers somebody published
| IMPS / NAMP specification | 185C — Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications, Series 100 — Fresh Beef bottom sirloin butt, tri-tip |
|---|---|
| Untrimmed weight | 5 lb — Tri-tip |
| Internal temperature for medium-rare | 130–135 °F — Tri-tip |
Nothing in this table is estimated here. Where a figure is missing it is missing, and the row is not written.
Recipes you may use
Public-domain cookbooks are printed here in full, spelling and all. Where a recipe is still in copyright, the page gives the ingredients — a list of what goes in is a fact — and links to the rest.
Santa Maria seasoning
- salt
- black pepper
- garlic salt
the seasoning as the tradition describes it — three things, rolled on before the meat goes over the coals
The traditional plate
- tri-tip or top block sirloin
- red oak coals
- pinquito beans
- fresh salsa
- tossed green salad
- French bread dipped in melted butter and grilled
the accompaniments named in the tradition; linguiça appears on many local menus alongside the beef
Its kin
Who points back
Sources
- Santa Maria–style barbecue · link
- Tri-tip · link
- Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications, Series 100 — Fresh Beef · link
- Santa Maria Style Barbeque Association · link
- Cut of beef · link
Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.