Cuts · UK butchery
Rump steak
The British steak counter's default: cut across the muscles over the hip, leaner and coarser than sirloin and priced accordingly.
Known as
The same muscle carries different names in different butchery systems, and some of those names mean different cuts elsewhere. Where a name is ambiguous, BBQHQ says so rather than picking one.
- United Kingdom
- Rump steak
- Scotland
- Popeseye
- United States
- Top sirloin
What to ask a butcher for
- United States: Rump steak in Britain; top sirloin in the United States.
- Scotland: Rump steak.
Where it comes from on the animal
Gluteal group (rump)
Rump · moderate use · connective tissue: moderate
The muscles over the hip, worked harder than the loin and less hard than the leg. That middle position is why rump has more flavour than sirloin and more chew than it too, and why the grain is coarse enough to matter when carving.
Muscles: Gluteus medius, Gluteus accessorius, Biceps femoris
Asking a butcher for it
Named the way uk butchery names it. If the counter does not recognise the name, the anatomy is the fallback: ask for the cut by where it comes from.
- What to say
- Rump steak.
- If that draws a blank
- Ask for rump — the muscle is Gluteus medius, Gluteus accessorius, Biceps femoris.
- What to specify
- Thickness, which governs the timing more than weight does — the usual range is 20–30 mm. Typical weight is 200–350 g.
What it is suited to
Derived from how hard the muscle works and how much connective tissue it carries, which is the pairing that decides whether a cut wants a fire under it or beside it. BBQHQ does not rank cuts and does not name a best one.
- Moderate connective tissue: it will take either approach, and the two give genuinely different results rather than one being a compromise.
BBQHQ holds cooking evidence for this cut as rump steak.
What to use instead
BBQHQ has established no substitute for this cut. That is a statement about what has been checked rather than a claim that none exists.
Asking for it in another country
BBQHQ has not established how this cut maps to other butchery systems.
The UK side of these mappings rests on AHDB’s published cutting specifications, which BBQHQ has read. The US side does not: USDA’s Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications and the Beef Checkoff cut pages both refuse automated access, so no mapping here reaches “same cut” across two butchery systems. See the open question.
Typical size
200–350 g