Rump steak

A bit of an obvious post I guess but who doesn't love a steak? Paul McCartney, that's who. The rest of us do but there's a compromise with steak - the more tender cuts don't have great flavour but the tastier ones are just too tough to be enjoyable. Ultimately we'd like the flavour of rump with the tenderness of fillet. Plus it's a sod to cook. You can do that 'pressing your fingers against the heel of your hand' thing to see if it's rare, medium or anywhere else on the spectrum but that's a regal pain in the backside. This is where a water bath can really help.

I'd always thought of rump steak as pet food before now. The flavour's great but it's chewy to the point of inedible but if you cook it in a water bath, you can get it to that perfect point of tenderness and get the flavour you want. It's been a bit of a revelation to be honest. Cooked to a temperature of 57ish, it turns out to be sirloin-like in texture but with more taste.

So onto the cooking. Two steaks, not the best quality as you'll see from the pictures and not completely defrosted. Not a problem as the water bath defrosts 'em in a couple of minutes. Plus it makes a bit more space in the freezer for Christmas. Lovely.

Vital statistics - 57.5 degrees for 1 hour, longer if yours are thicker (oo-er). 

See update at the bottom for more temperatures

Exhibit 1.

Exhibit 2.

For us, 57.5 degrees gives us a good pink colour without leaching too much onto the plate. I might try 57 or 56.5 in the future but it's pretty much ideal for us so it'd just be tweaking. The water bath I use tends to run slightly under for a chunk of the time, presumably because slightly undercooked can be corrected but you can never come back from overcooked. Here's a picture to show that although I could've drawn the numbers on with a crayon for all it's proving.

The rack's set vertically to stop them falling over and allow the water to circulate around the bath. On the right of the picture is a hole punch. I knew you were wondering.

And here's the thing - food out of a water bath never looks great. It's perfectly cooked but lacks that lovely caramelisation that makes food inviting and that's because at this stage it's effectively poached. And who doesn't love a bit of poached beef??

There's no way to make this any more interesting. It's salt.

The next stage is to give the steaks some colour for flavour and appearance. There's various ways you can do this and I'll post about the pros and cons soon but this time I went for the blowtorch option. Not because I was having a bad day or anything, I just wanted to see what difference blowtorching would make to the taste instead of the usual frying.

And this is what you get. Compare it to the picture straight out of the water bath and they look much better, and taste much better too. I'd probably brush them with oil before torching next time to get a bit more sizzle going.

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The all important question is how did they turn out?

The important thing is the lack of a gradient - they're the same pink all the way through and that's what sous vide is so good at.

In case you're wondering, yes, that is gravy. The gravy wasn't for the steak - we're not that bohemian ; it was for the chips but it strayed. Chips and gravy? Well, it was a Sunday.

And that's it for rump steak. Much better than I've had it before and the steak we now go for as our first choice. Worth the effort - definitely.

Update

Since posting this, we've cooked two more lots of rump steaks, reducing the temperature by 0.5 each time to see if they'd turn out pinker and nicer, or just too darned raw. Obviously I won't post the cooking pictures, but here's how they turn out with the temperature dialed down a tad.


57 degrees -

56.5 degrees -

For us, it was worth the (minimal) risk because 56.5 is the new 57.5. I'm not sure we'd want to go any lower in case it starts kicking chips off the plate but this reduced temperature keeps the tenderness but adds a bunch of juiciness. For these steaks, one slice with the knife was enough - they were literally fillet tender.

You might look at the pictures and think differently but for us, 56.5 is the way to go.