Smoked Tri-Tip with Pico De Gallo

Jump to recipe

I was on a cruise with my wife’s family and we stopped in Santa Barbara, California.  We were walking around the “Funk Zone” and found a place we contemplated renting little two person “vehicles” from.  We figured it would be better to eat first so we asked the guy there where a good spot to eat was.  Without thought he pointed to the next road over and said:  “Go to Shalhoob Meat Company.  You won’t be sorry!”  So that is what we did!

My wife ordered the burger (which is usually what I do), but the Tri-tip sandwich was calling my name. One thing that I didn’t realize the tri-tip sandwich would have on it is pico de gallo.  To me, that’s not a good fit. So if I had known it prior to ordering it I could’ve made a horrible mistake.  Well I didn’t and it was DELICIOUS!  Neither of us was disappointed one bit.  In fact we are now trying to plan another trip to Santa Barbara so that we can eat there again.

Ever since we got back from our vacation I’ve thought about trying to recreate the sandwich. Well I finally tried and I’m now fully convinced that Pico de Gallo belongs on everything Tri-tip!  I found a recipe on a website called “Bush Cooking.”  I did change a few things and techniques to work with my equipment so you can compare the two and see which you prefer.  But I wanted to give a HUGE shout out to them for getting me mostly there!

Below is what I did and I’ll do it very similarly in the future without changing much: