Delicious rump roast smoked low and slow on your backyard smoker or grill over hickory wood. Prepared in a simple dry rub seasoning, this easy BBQ recipe is the perfect choice for holiday dinners or weekend family gatherings.
This smoked rump roast recipe is set to be the star of your next barbecue dinner. With its rich beefy flavor, this lean meat cut becomes irresistibly tender and juicy when cooked slowly over smoke. Our easy-to-follow method uses a garlic and paprika dry rub, adding layers of taste that meld beautifully with hickory wood smoke.
From choosing the best smoking wood to resting your beef, discover how to smoke rump roast from scratch. Let’s get cooking!
What is Rump Roast?
Rump roast is a beef cut from the steer’s hindquarters (just above the hindlegs) and forms the top part of the beef round primal. Because this part of the animal isn’t well-worked, rump roast is rich in connective tissue, making it extremely tender and juicy. It’s also a lean beef cut, meaning that it needs to be cooked low and slow to bring the best out of it. That’s where barbecue smoking comes in.
While you can buy rump roast bone-in (also known as standing rump roast), boneless rump makes it easier to prepare and also keeps smoke times shorter and more consistent across the roast.
How to Smoke Rump Roast
Smoking rump roast is quite simple and can be done in just a few steps. Full ingredients and temperatures can be found at the end of this post, but the five key steps are:
- Fire Up: Preheat your smoker to 225°F (107°C). If you’re using a charcoal grill, make sure you’ve set up for 2-zone cooking and have plenty of room on your grates on the indirect side for your roast.
- Meat Prep: Use a paring knife to trim any excess fat off the rump roast, but do not remove the fat cap that sits on top of it.
- Dry Rub: Pat the beef dry with paper towels and then coat with our dry rub seasoning blend
- Smoke: With your smoker warmed up, place the roast on your smoker grates and cook to either medium rare or medium doneness
- Rest: Pull your rump roast from the smoker and allow it to rest for 10 minutes before slicing to serve
Dry Rub
Like with most of our smoker recipes, we’re going to start our meat prep with a good dry rub.
While you can just go for a simple store-bought BBQ rub, I recommend you try to make your own. They’re easy to make, and you can tweak the amount of salt, spice, and sugar to your liking.
For our rump roast dry rub, we’ll be using:
- 2 tbsp kosher salt
- 1 tbsp black pepper
- 1 tbsp garlic powder
- 1 tbsp onion powder
- 1 tbsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp cumin powder
Simply combine the ingredients in a small bowl with a fork, and try to mix them as well as possible. Break down any visible clumps with your fork.
Then, apply the rub by lightly sprinkling it over the rump roast, and aim for an even coating that covers all sides of the roast. Use your hands to work the rub in (you might want to wear disposable gloves for this, but it’s not completely necessary).
Let the seasoned rump roast sit out as your smoke warms up. This will allow the salt to start tenderizing the meat, and it will also let the beef come up to room temperature a bit, which will help it cook more evenly.
Best Wood for Smoking Rump Roast
When you are selecting wood for smoking a rump roast, you have many options to choose from. The best and most popular choices are either oak or hickory, and will bring an additional level of smoky flavor to your beef.
If you are looking for a sweeter taste, try blending in some applewood with hickory. While you will still have a smoky flavor, it will be mixed in with a subtle level of sweetness.
Time and Temperatures
Our rump roast will be smoked at 225°F (107°C) until it reaches an internal temperature of 130-135°F (54-57°C) for medium rare, or 140-145°F (60-63°C) if you prefer medium doneness. There’s no hard and fast rule for how long this takes since factors like meat size, smoker performance, and even the weather can all impact cook time. However, in general, this should take about 30 minutes per pound, so at least 2 hours for our 4lb roast. Always use a digital meat probe to measure meat temperature.
Smoked Rump Roast
Ingredients
- 4 lbs rump roast
- 2 tbsp olive oil
Dry Rub
- 2 tbsp kosher salt
- 1 tbsp black pepper
- 1 tbsp garlic powder
- 1 tbsp onion powder
- 1 tbsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp cumin powder
Instructions
- Preheat your smoker to 225°F (107°C)
- Remove the rump roast from the refrigerator and allow it to get to room temperature
- Combine the kosher salt, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, smoked paprika, and cumin in a small bowl to make the dry rub
- Coat the rump roast with the olive oil, then sprinkle the dry rub over all sides of the meat, gently massaging the rub into the surface
- Place the rump roast in the smoker and smoke for approximately 2-3 hours, or until the internal temperature reaches 130-135°F (54 – 57℃) for medium rare or 140-145°F (60 to 63℃) for medium doneness
- Remove the rump roast from the smoker and let it rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving
