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Celebrity chef Bobby Flay loves dining out in NYC just as much as grilling at home, and when he’s grilling at home, he does it with one particularly punchy seasoning. Today’s Flay tip for home cooks is all about leveling up your go-to steak recipes, and when tri-tip’s on the menu, this succulent cut doesn’t need a whole lot of extra help to shine, flavor-wise. Tri-tip steak is the darling of the California barbecue scene and the primo choice cut for making juicy steak tips. As the chef explains in an instructional video via Food Network, the tri-tip comes from the bottom of the sirloin, a particularly flavorful cut. To showcase that naturally robust, savory, meaty flavor, granulated garlic is the best tool for the job.
If you’ve never worked with it before, granulated garlic is dehydrated minced garlic cloves. Whereas garlic powder is ground in a food processor, granulated garlic retains a coarser cornmeal-like texture, which better adheres to the surface of the meat than its ultra-fine powder counterpart. It won’t fall off and gunk up your grill mid-cook. Plus, there’s umami flavor bursting in every one of those coarse granules for a big impact on the palette. A 25-ounce container of Spice Classics’ Granulated Garlic runs for $11.95 on Amazon and is enough to make multiple steak dinners for a houseful of hungry barbecue guests.
Read more: The Most Popular Cuts Of Steak Ranked Worst To Best
How Bobby Flay Uses His Granulated Garlic On Steak
Seasoned steak against a dark background – Lauri Patterson/Getty Images
With this meaty beauty, less is more, and Flay keeps the seasonings simple. He sprinkles his raw tri-tip steak with a generous shake of salt, pepper, and granulated garlic (that’s it), then slams the meat on a hot grill over direct heat. Flay’s cooking style is often characterized by transforming straightforward ingredients into culinary creations greater than the sum of their parts — perhaps due to his background in traditional French cooking. However, for a more elevated touch, he grills his simply-seasoned tri-tip on hardwood charcoal and red oak chips. Then, after a crust develops on the outside of the steaks, he moves them to a higher shelf on the grill, away from direct heat for slow and low cooking.
Don’t forget to let your tri-tips rest for a few minutes after taking ’em off the grill. (No carryover cooking here, officer). In fact, it’s not a bad idea to rest your steak for a few minutes before cooking it, as well. To serve, cut your garlic-coated steak across the grain of the meat and hit it with a sprinkle of Vancouver Island flaky sea salt, our all-time favorite finishing salt for steak. (Pro tip: If you can’t track down tri-tip steak at your local grocery store and don’t have time to hit the butcher shop, flap meat makes a solid substitute).
Read the original article on Tasting Table.
