The Rise and Rise of the Humble Rump

Peeking through menus at top-of-town restaurants, you might notice an increase in visibility of the humble rump. There seems to be a trend towards this full-of-flavour cut that isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

Not normally one for the limelight, rump is the backbone of our favourite stews and slow cooks. Paired with Guinness, beef rump wins every time in the famous British pie of the same name.

But the tide is turning, and so is the limelight.We have a sneaking suspicion that marble-score might have something to do with it. No one will argue that for flavour, it’s rump every time, but for tenderness, the more popular grilling steaks win on a restaurant menu – ‘til now.

We’ve seen top end restaurants offering 350g rump steaks, grilled to your liking, and share plates of 1kg rump cap, roasted and served with classic sauces and mustards. What we’ve also noticed is that in many cases, it’s highly marbled Angus or Wagyu Cross on offer.

Thanks to Coco & Vine for this photo from Pony Dining The Rocks.

The classic way of looking at cut-for-cook-type with beef is to examine where a cut comes from on the animal. More tender cuts are muscles that have done the least amount of work – picture tenderloin. And conversely, a high degree of flavour comes from the muscles that do all the work – e.g. that hardworking rump. Look at the cuts chart below to see what we mean, and visit the Black Onyx site here for our interactive chart.

But when you add a higher marble score into the mix, things start to get interesting…really interesting. For more on what marbling is, click here to read about it on our Black Onyx website. In short, intramuscular marbling makes a cut more tender to the bite, no matter where it comes from.

Pic – Chef Adam Herbert, @mightymightychef on Instagram

So, looking at it from that point of view, it’s fair to say that the humble rump just might be a limelight worthy superstar after all. Something we’ve been guessing at for a while 😉

The menus around town? Don’t take our word for it, go visit some restaurants for yourself and let us know what you find.

Here’s a few to start with:

To learn more about our 100% pure Black Angus Brands, click here. Or to find out about our Wagyu Cross brand, WX, click here.

Images courtesy Coco & Vine and Chef Adam Herbert