I want a character to spout a long string of steak-related superlatives in the dialogue below, but I'm not really a foodie so I don't know the right terms. Does what I have make sense, or else can anyone suggest something better? “But this may not be a great plan. Waving a juicy steak in front of a shark might be a good distraction, but it’s only going to end well if you’re absolutely sure the steak can get away.” “Uh, am I the steak in that little analogy?” “100% prime grass-fed dry-aged medium-rare rump, my friend.” “Rump?” “My favorite cut.” She shrugged. “I’m not even trying for the innuendo. It’s just the tastiest.” ETA: The book is for a general audience, so the terms need to be clear enough that a generalist would know what they mean, but hopefully specific enough that any specialists who happen to read it won't be pulled out of the story. The characters are both beef farmers in Ontario, Canada, if that matters at all. (And Ontario could very well be changed to somewhere in the US, depending on the publisher...)
I recommend that they refer to grain-fed--it has more fat and flavor, even though it's less healthy for both the cow and the eater. For cut, on the same assumption that the person is into fat and flavor, I'd recommend porterhouse or ribeye. (A ribeye is a subset of a porterhouse. The other part is New York strip, but IMO the lack of bone makes that cut less interesting. And they could gripe, as I do, about butchers and restaurants who trim too much fat off the steak. If you want healthy, eat chicken.
I would be remiss in my duties as a foodie if I didn't point out that they don't really makes steaks out of the rump. It's usually made into a rump roast, which is a fairly cheap and not very flavorful cut. So the perve in me enjoys the innuendo, but I wouldn't consider it that flattering if someone referred to me as rump. I'd think more like: “100% Angus grass-fed dry-aged medium-rare sirloin, my friend.”
I'm with Laurin, except I'd switch out the 'sirloin' for @ChickenFreak 's ribeye (around here they call them Delmonico). There's nothing better than a ribeye steak. Nothing. YUM.
My favorite is actually tenderloin (fillet mignon). I like my steak terrifyingly rare, and it seems to be the hardest one for restaurants to overcook. And don't even get me started on Beef Wellington...
I'm a bad foodie - a very bad foodie. I hate restaurants and am never happy with the food in them. I cook my own stuff, so I can do it right.
I tried to correct grain fed to corn fed, and my post seems to have evaporated. So I try again: corn fed.
Quick breakdown: Filet Mignon (tenderloin): the most tender due to a lack of connective tissue (marbling); it comes from the spinal region between the cow's shoulders, which is a fairly useless muscle, hence the lack of marbling. Filet tends to be the most expensive and served in smaller portions (though ribeye is catching up). Chefs recommend it medium rare. Ribeye: most flavorful because it has a shit load of fat and marbling. All the flavor is in the fat. That's the whole point of a ribeye. Trouble with ribeye is you need a thick cut and the size of the full ribeye rack varies quite a bit in width. The wider the ribeye, the thinner it's cut to reach a consistent weight. Chefs recommend medium to allow the fat the melt. Like @ChickenFreak said, anyone who complains about a fatty ribeye should be shot Sirloin (or NY strip): is kind of in the middle of as far as tenderness vs. flavorful goes. It's a little cheaper than the other two. Sirloin is recommended medium rare, though to be honest, sirloin is kind of dead. People don't order it like they used to. It's got a bit of a reputation as your grandmother's steak. The newer hot cuts are hanger, flap, skirt, and flat-iron. You got great value with these until the "foodies" discovered them and the restaurants figured out they could steal their money. Rump is not steak. It's barely soup-base worthy. Porterhouse: half sirloin (big half), half tenderloin. Very expensive, not terribly popular anymore. Domain of urban steak houses usually. Of course, the best shit will always be the offical Kobe beef from Japan, which can run you a few hundreds of dollars. It's hard to get, but high end joints still sell it. Grass-fed is the new thing and there is a difference in quality. The only difference between dry and wet aged is open air (dry) vs. vacuum sealed (wet) aging. Most steaks are dry aged in house, which doesn't really mean much because the great cuts of beer have been dry aged already. When you see "dry aged in house" it usually means the joint bought a cheap cut and trying to make it look fancy. Don't fall for that shit. Angus has several trim levels, with Angus prime being the best. Everything is Angus now, so that might not be noteworthy. If you're really looking for fancy steaks, you're better off looking at the ovens. High end steak houses use an infrared oven at something like 1100 degrees. Grills are for chumps. You have to finish the steaks in the broilers anyway. Oldest trick in the book--mark the steaks on the grill and then pop them in the broiler.
And make very sure it's official, the "Kobe" brand is dodgy as hell with a lot of places using slippery phrasing to get you to pay bucketloads for quite ordinary beef. According to Wikipedia, real Kobe beef was never exported before 2012, which is news to me, as I remember eating at a Kobe Steakhouse in Honolulu in 1992. There's even an issue in Japan; Japanese people think that "Wagyu" beef is domestic (Japanese) beef, however legally the cattle only need spend the last three months of their lives in Japan to meet the designation, so there are a lot of ranches in Hawaii and New Zealand that raise wagyu cattle and ship them here when they're just about ready to be converted to steak. My first experiences with "ribeye" were in barracks chow halls and dormitory cafeterias, with Grade D meat that had been tossed onto a... what's the English word for "teppan?" Flat iron griddle? Anyway, flat-fried in vegetable oil for long enough to turn the meat to shoeleather while retaining the chewiness and sliminess of the long, solid strips of fat. I've had good ribeye since, but I still can't stand the stuff.
I'd only ever heard of rump roast, too, but when I was researching I kept coming across people saying rump steak is the most flavourful and it's what true steak lovers want... now that I google with different terms I see a lot of uk, au, nz sites referring to rump, but not many North American...?
Hmmm. It appears that what Americans call rump steak and what some other countries call rump steak are completely different cuts. I didn't know that. http://www.cooksinfo.com/rump-steak So to keep the lovely innuendo line, you may need to change the setting?
I don't think the line's worth moving the whole story for! Hmmm... the character's a world traveller... I could have her say something about how they call it the rump in Australia, or something...
"The British and Commonwealth English "rump steak" is commonly called "sirloin" in American English. On the other hand, British "sirloin" is called short loin or "porterhouse" by Americans." Zuh? That's the weirdest shit I've heard this week. This is one of the few times I would take the American culinary interpretation over a European one, though I suppose the UK doesn't really count (no offense to them, but Western culinary theory is predominately Continental -- usually French or Mediterranean). I'd go with something safe like "ribeye." Rump steak won't translate. Americans take steak seriously and will think your character is eating dog food, which might be funny, I guess, if that's what you're going for. Sounds like you might be looking to make a gag out of it.
