Joel McHale’s 2-Ingredient Trick for the Best Smoked Tri-Tip

Fans of the hugely popular 2010s sitcom Community — including myself — are eagerly awaiting the confirmed release date of the show’s long-anticipated movie. While we hope to see characters like Jeff, Britta, Abed, Shirley, Annie, and Troy debut on the big screen, I’m happy to pass the time by learning about the actors behind these favorite characters — especially when they share insights into their cooking habits.

You may be familiar with Joel McHale as Community’s former lawyer, Jeff Winger, or the exacting fine dining chef who haunts Carmy’s memories on The Bear, but in real life, this comedian and actor is also a passionate home cook.  

We sat down to talk with McHale about his new partnership with Seattle’s Best Coffee — not only did the actor grow up in Seattle, but he’s also a coffee enthusiast, enjoying several cups a day and taking his brews seriously. As a result, Seattle’s Best and the Community star have teamed up to promote the company’s new Coffee Roast Mallows — coffee-flavored marshmallows perfect for your next batch of s’mores. 

This points towards one of McHale’s other loves and an unexpected area of expertise: outdoor cooking. The comedian tells Food & Wine he loves grilling and even spills his secrets to his method for slowly smoking beef until tender.

Because McHale lives in Southern California, he notes that cooking outdoors is easy for him all year round. And while he’s not a professional chef, the actor says, “I’m really good at certain things.” One of those “certain things” is smoking a particular cut of beef.

When asked what he loves or is especially good at cooking, McHale’s immediate reply is, “smoking tri-tip” but he clarifies that he’s “done it 10 times now to get good at it.” To emulate his thoroughly tested tri-tip strategy — which McHale notes he learned from Australian chef Jess Pryles — he recommends that you “start off with a high-quality tri-tip, and then you keep it in a whole piece. 

“You hit it with mustard or oil as a binder, and then I put all sorts of different spices on it and then throw that in the old Pitts & Spitts smoker for an hour. And then every 15 minutes — [for an] hour and a half — spray it with Worcestershire sauce and bourbon… For the fourth of July I made five of those and that, I will say, was really good.”

There are a few easy but brilliant tips to unpack here. To start, choosing tri-tip when smoking is an excellent choice for anyone new to using a smoker or looking to save time. Brisket might be the most popular option for smoking a large cut of beef, but slowly smoking this cut typically takes at least 12 hours or more. In contrast, a tri-tip can be ready in about two hours, and it’s also budget-friendly.

Additionally, McHale explains that tri-tip is “actually an easier option than a brisket, because the meat is not as tough. And brisket, you break down; it’s breaking down the muscle over the hours… This is definitely more tender… I would say in the spectrum of difficult smoking meats, [tri-tip] is not that bad, but it still is really tasty. I’ve done briskets that take 20 hours, 24 hours, and you don’t get any sleep.”

The comedian’s other effortlessly delicious idea is his two-ingredient spritz on the outside of the meat, made of Worcestershire sauce and bourbon. Spraying smoked meats with a flavorful liquid like apple cider vinegar isn’t unusual and helps prevent them from drying out while adding more flavor throughout the protein as it cooks.

Worcestershire sauce captures all the nuances you’d want to add to smoked meat. It’s tangy, rich in umami flavor, and slightly sweet — the sugars in the sauce might also help form a crust on the tri-tip.

Combined with the caramel and oak notes of bourbon, it’s a match made in heaven, and one I’ll be testing out soon even on oven-roasted pork shoulders or racks of ribs, in addition to McHale’s recommended tri-tip.