Once an obscure cut that could only be found in California butcher shops, the Tri-Tip has become one of the most popular meats to hit the grill. The reason for this is the near perfect combination of meat to fat and the fact that that fat is evenly distributed so the meat remains tender and moist.
For years, the beef tri-tip found itself being ground into hamburger or cut into cubes and sold as soup meat. The reason for this is that there is only one per side of beef and in the days when butchers carved their own meat it was considered a waste of display space to sell the tri-tip by itself.