The Perfect Rump Steak

When I go to restaurants I tend not to order steak as they can be quite disappointing.  Usually the meat lacks flavour and the chef's version of medium or black and blue is very different to mine. When I'm at home I know I can make steak just the way I like it. So here is my idea of a perfect steak. 

We'll start with the marinade. I like to keep mine simple so it doesn't overpower the meat. I used dried parsley, dried basil, salt and lots of pepper with a bit of olive oil. It's important to marinate the fatty areas as well as the lean parts. The steak should be at room temperature when you come to cook it, so normally I put the marinade on when the steak comes out of the fridge until I cook it. 

I don't trim the fat from my steak I think it adds flavour and lubrication in the pan. If there are any hard bits of fat that are normally a white colour, I will remove that though.

When the meat is just about ready to cook, I heat a griddle pan on the highest setting on my stove until it is slightly smoking. Then I quickly put the steak on the pan. These thin rumps are organic supermarket quality, I would normally go to my butcher for steak and ask for a cut that is a bit thicker. So in terms of cooking time, I cooked each side for two minutes for a medium. 

On a griddle this means one minute lengthways then turn 90 degrees for another minute the other way to get these charred lines. While the meat is cooking, I press down on the fat to ensure most of gets rendered. This results in a outer crust and cooked juicy centre. On a thicker steak, I would actually turn the steaks onto the fat side and cook the fat for a minute.

I only flip my steaks once because on a griddle pan, multiple flips mess up the pattern on the steak and I don't really like that. Once both sides are cooked, I put the steaks on a plate to rest. It's at this point I start to cook any greens or prepare any salads to go with the steak. So they tend to rest for 10-15 minutes. The juices will slowly start to flow out of the steak and under it during this time.

So here it is- steak, just the way I like it. Pink in the middle, rendered fat and juices flowing out the bottom. Thanks to the marinade, steak done this way doesn't even need a sauce.