Hawaiian Island Barbecue Beef
November 5, 2007
The purpose of Command of the Grill week is to promote the book “Command of the Grill”, whose proceeds benefit charities that support Marines. I’m not making any money off of this, and anything made from traffic during the month of November will be donated to Toys for Tots. You can read more here, or follow this link to purchase your own copy. This is a really easy way to support our troops. Semper Fi!
This beautiful piece of meat is a Tri-tip roast. My understanding is that tri-tip is really only popular in parts of California. Luckily, probably because of the number of Californians that have moved to Colorado, tri-tip is available in my local grocery stores.
This particular tri-tip was lucky enough to be used for Gunny Steven Burkett’s “Hawaiian Island Barbecue Beef” recipe, which was the first runner up at the Marine 
Corps Base Hawaii competition.
I was lucky enough to have been stationed at MCB Hawaii Kaneohe Bay from 1993 to 1998, and I don’t think the Gunny was there cooking this beef, or I would probably know him personally.
One of the keys to this particular recipe is the sauce. First you take some pineapple and roast it on the grill, then combine it with various ingredients, including one of my favorite ingredients, Srirachi chili sauce, and then puree everything.
The sauce is used to coat the meet in the indirect phase of cooking (more on that later in this post) and then later served with the meat.
The end result is not only something that tastes as delicious as it looks in these pictures, but it has just enough zip from the sauce to really accent the meat.
Just like with Disco’s recipe, this sauce is going to find its way onto many other dishes. Its already been on chicken. Really, that sauce is good!
I had mentioned that out of all the recipes I have done so far, only one of them
has not been worth the price of the book. Let me tell you, it isn’t this one.
This is so good, if I had tasted it, I would easily have paid $10 to get the recipe.
As I mentioned above, I am pretty new to tri-tip roasts. As a matter of fact, this one is the third one that I’ve cooked. One of the things that amazed me about this cut of meat is how easy it is to cook. Basically, you get your grill set up for 2 zones, one medium high, and the other no heat.
Place the roast on over the coals, getting a nice sear on it, for about 10 minutes, flipping it over one time. Then, place the roast over the section of the grill with no heat. Then cook it for about 15 minutes there, with the grill covered, flipping it one time.
That’s it. Let it rest for awhile, covered if foil, and then cut it up. About a third of mine never touched a plate. It went straight from the cutting board into my mouth.
Of course, if you aren’t the type of person who likes their meat rare, then you’ll probably want to cook it longer. You can see from that second picture, that the meat is a nice uniform color red, all the way through. The meat was so juicy I couldn’t believe it. Cut across the grain, the meat is really tender and easy to chew.
We loved this recipe, and it will come in handy when the grocery store puts tri-tips on sale. The Sauce is also going to become one of my staples.
Clicking on any of the pictures will open a larger, juicier version, suitable for a wallpaper. 
Also on Port 16:
Posted in Grilling, Semper Fi, Command of the Grill, Charity, Books, barbecue
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November 6th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Oh. My. Goodness. I’m always amazed when I can look at food after I’ve eaten, and just want to collapse after I’ve seem a slab o’ beef like this. What a great idea for tri-tips. I have some top sirloin. That might just work for tomorrow!
November 7th, 2007 at 7:49 am
I’ll tell you Kelly, its been a real hardship cooking all of those beef recipes for the week.
That sauce is really good, I think it would taste great on some top sirloin.
Thanks for the comment!