So here we have the rump calf muscle that has been seemed off the original d cut rump and have a little bit of cleaning up to do, we've got a triangular wedge a fat, which is the one we followed down through the natural seem, we have a thick silver gristle and we have a little bit of a chain muscle so it's trimming this down to an acceptable level, so will take off little bits have underlined meet that can be used for further processing in to mints and now we can remove this large wedge of fat.
Now looking so we don't cut in and damage the underlying muscle of the rump, just peeling that back crossover the meat and also coming with this piece fat is a thick silver gristle, so again that needs to be removed and then here we have a thick silver gristle and following a contour of that muscle around the excess fat on the edge, so remove this gristle I'm just going to put the tip of the knife shallowly underneath that gristle and then just skinning off lightly again trying to keep it is clean as we can on the underside, so we don't have any cuts or incisions you can now see the fine texture of the meat up this end but the long coarse grain of the muscle here, traditionally this would have been cut at this angle into steaks but if you look at the grain we’d actually be cutting down the grain that muscle which gives us a chewy bite, so the positive aspects of haven seen butchery is that we take at the individual muscle and we can actually turn this round and cut across the grain at its narrowest so we're going across it rather than cutting down traditionally the normal way.
Finally though before I slice this I'm just going to reduce some of the fat thickness so I get an even covering, taking a little bit to the fat off, I'm not taking all of it I'm just making it more plate presentable, so just checking we’ve removed all of the thick silver gristle, any excess fats and what we're left with is a trimmed rump cap.
We have two methods here we can either produce a joint or we can cut it into steaks, so I will show you both methods here’s another cap I did earlier identical trimmed just an external fat level happy with that, for the joint in method we can cut this or serve it whole if we wished, but to make a smaller joint I'm going to cut down the centre to keep give me and nice uniform portion, I have one small section and one longer, I'm going to put some roasting bands or will tie the piece up, the bands go on nice and easy, I'm not squeezing the meat as we often forget that meet consists of a lot of moisture and if we tie this up too tight we will be squeezing that juice of the meat during the cooking process so we want to keep the succulents in so there's our bands around the joint evenly spaced nice and tidy, we can use that as one joint we can keep that as an individual joint and put bans on as well and we can also just reduce the size of the bigger portion and cut that into two smaller mini joints and there you have three little mini rump capped joints.
Alternatively we can take the same piece as I said before instead of cutting traditionally down the grain we can turn this around and cut across the grain and I'll cut at a slight angle and this will produce us our rump cap stakes or what is also known as picanha steaks and when you cut a steak you may need just to reduce the fat level, but that will be down to personal requirement and again just getting it to an even level and that is our picanha steaks or our rump capped muscle.
The Staff Canteen team are taking a different approach to keeping our website independent and delivering content free from commercial influence. Our Editorial team have a critical role to play in informing and supporting our audience in a balanced way. We would never put up a paywall – The Staff Canteen is open to all and we want to keep bringing you the content you want; more from younger chefs, more on mental health, more tips and industry knowledge, more recipes and more videos. We need your support right now, more than ever, to keep The Staff Canteen active. Without your financial contributions this would not be possible.
Over the last 16 years, The Staff Canteen has built what has become the go-to platform for chefs and hospitality professionals. As members and visitors, your daily support has made The Staff Canteen what it is today. Our features and videos from the world’s biggest name chefs are something we are proud of. We have over 560,000 followers across Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube and other social channels, each connecting with chefs across the world. Our editorial and social media team are creating and delivering engaging content every day, to support you and the whole sector - we want to do more for you.
A single coffee is more than £2, a beer is £4.50 and a large glass of wine can be £6 or more.
Support The Staff Canteen from as little as £1 today. Thank you.
