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How to take care of a new cutting board?
I got a new bamboo cutting board.
What do I clean it with?
How do I otherwise take care of it to make it last?
Thanks for any tips!
I got a new bamboo cutting board.
What do I clean it with?
How do I otherwise take care of it to make it last?
Thanks for any tips!
That's really about it. People get nervous cutting raw meats on cutting boards so they go overboard on cleaning but it's not necessary and will shorten the life of the board dramatically. Wood has antimicrobial properties and keeping the board oiled will stop fluid transfer deep into the board.
Edit: also, I still tend to use a board for meats and a separate board for veg, though between cooking sessions it matters not. I just typically am processing multiple ingredients at once and I like to have it sunk into my head which one is for which task
Edit2: the board will gather stains over time. This is normal and does not mean the board is dirty. You can sand most of it out if you really want to but the board will patina, don't worry about it.
OP, Jambo here nails it. I also follow the "board for meats, second board for veggies/etc" plan and have had good results.
I thought that was good advice. I don't eat meat, so I have no worries in that regard.
Yes, what Jambo said is correct. However, I don't like using mineral oil (= petroleum-based) things that will get in touch with my food.
One alternative is to use "distilled coconut oil", this is a coconut oil which is shelf stable and doesn't go rancid. It's not your average coconut oil. In Europe, the best company selling it use to be "UULKI" from Belgium, they were selling it all over europe on amazon/etsy/... or directly from their website. Unfortunately, it seems like they went under last year. (Sorry for the instagram link, but this is the only place I could find what they used to sell) I don't know what is the best in North America.
I still have a bottle from them, so I haven't tried to find a replacement for this brand, which was great. "vegan wood oil kitchen" on your favourite search engine or online store should lead you to something, after a lot of scrolling and clicking. I've never managed to find anything with "distilled coconut oil" or "distilled coconut wood oil". Maybe "petroleum free wood oil kitchen" or "petroleum free wood oil food" might work as well.
Adding on the advice of Jambo, I have marked one side of the board, in a corner, with a food safe marker. On that side of the board I cut "smelly food", such has onion, garlic, ginger, fish, ...
Edit: not all refined coconut oil are distilled coconut oil, but you can also search for refined coconut oil which is for oiling wood.
Another option that I use is food-safe tung oil. (It is not appropriate for people with tree nut allergies, however.)
Mineral oil is petroleum, you might not ever ingest enough of it to matter from your cutting board, but it's not edibile and has documented ill effects when taken orally.
Valid, and I did mean to say 'food safe' variants, whoops on that one. With the amount of flaked off Teflon coating or plastic cutting board shards I've probably consumed, I don't consider it overly dangerous (for my own personal safety) so I don't mind using it, but I do agree that it is very good knowledge to have so thanks for pointing it out!
Source for your statement? Mineral oil is an over the counter product you can buy for human consumption (as a laxative)
I would be interested in seeing these “documented ill effects” you speak of
The reason it works as a laxative is that your guts want so badly to get rid of it.
That’s… not why it works as a laxative at all.
Coating the intestinal wall with a film of oil interferes with nutrient absorbtion and your guts absolutely don't want that. No argument that the accepted mechanism is lubrication, but also it would be silly to think your digestive tract won't move things through faster as a result of a foreign substance.
Anyway, all I originally intended to point out was that mineral oil is petroleum, which is something I'd want to know. Ya'll do what you like with that.
If you are unable to produce reliable literature covering the "documented ill effects" of mineral oil, you should not be making statements advising people to stay away from something
What statement is it that you think I made? I recall saying that the OP might not need to worry about it given the small amounts you'd get from a cutting board.
I'm sorry that you feel your request for sources demands a response. Often, if it's on the first page of results for an easy to come up with search, I skip it unless I have extra time or I think the conversation is going somewhere.
As I said, do what you like with it.
There are food and pharmaceutical grades of mineral oil.
Give it a rinse under the tap, use a little soap if needed, then let it fully dry.
I do not oil my cutting boards. There is surprisingly little actual research on how it affects food safety, but what there is is pretty clear that the least amount of recoverable surface bacteria is from untreated boards, not oiled ones. I do not care at all that a board might crack a little sooner or not. Cutting boards, even great ones, are cheap. I do care about avoiding food poisoning, and dry wood kills bacteria.
The trouble with these studies (there's another one comparing plastic boards to wooden boards) is that they're based on disgusting habits. They inoculate the board, then leave it unwashed for 24 hours. I don't care about how boards perform if left unwashed for a day - I wash my board as soon as possible after use.
The other problem is that the advice about oiling a board is "once a day for a week; once a week for a month; and once a month for a year". But the linked study did not test those boards:
This feels like what I want from a board. Contaminants are not soaking in, they can be washed off, allowing me to continue using the board right now, and not having to wait 24 hour for the anti-microbial action of the wood to take effect.
All perfectly reasonable points, and I appreciate your adding to the discussion. Two slight counterpoints:
I wash my board immediately after use as well. Everyone should! But we can't guarantee that there isn't a slightly missed spot, a drop we didn't see, or heck, even after-cleaning contamination from just being in the kitchen- they aren't clean rooms, after all. I like the idea that even if my other layers of safety fail, the intrinsic nature of the wood has my back.
A freshly-sealed, multicoat board that hasn't gone through actual use is a best-case scenario, and we really don't know whether that coating is as durable as we might hope once exposed to normal wear.
Hot water and a quick scrub with a soapy sponge after each use is how I treat my wood cutting boards. I typically chop my vegetables before cutting my meat so I just need to do it once. Doesn't seem like it needs to be more complicated than that.
Some good advice in this thread, but I just want to add something that I haven't seen mentioned and impacts a lot of the stuff you read about cutting boards online: wood grain orientation.
image for reference
The classic example is to think of wood like a bunch of straws clumped together. If you lay those straws side-by-side, it's a lot easier to build a cutting board, but with time you'll start seeing some minor scratches as the knife you use nicks the sides of the straws. There's not really much you can do to avoid this, that's just a feature of boards that are glued up that way.
The more expensive option is an end-grain cutting board, where instead of the straws being glued flat lengthwise, they are cut into much smaller pieces and glued up in such a way that the open mouths of the straws (the end grain) is what makes up the actual surface of the cutting board. This is more expensive because it takes more work and materials, but the result is that your cutting board will not get those tiny scratches as it gets older, because the knife sort of glides in between the ends of the straws.
The key takeaway here is that they are two completely different styles of boards and thus differ in how they are kept and maintained. A lot of what you read online about taking care of cutting boards assumes you're talking about a high-end end-grain cutting board. The end-grain surface soaks up a lot of finish (whether that be mineral oil (aka paraffin), tung oil, wax, or something else), which means it has to be reapplied more often and in higher quantities since it soaks into the board, and you want to ensure that the board is saturated in your preferred finish so that the juices from your food don't penetrate deep into the wood. On a side-grain cutting board, the straw ends are at the edges, so you're not going to need as much of your desired finish and will not need to reapply as often (since it's a lot harder to get liquids into the side of a straw than through its mouth).
However, neither one should be put in a dishwasher (or washed under really hot water for long periods of time, like being left soaking in a sink) because A) that gives water more time to seep into the wood, which is what you don't want, hence the entire purpose of applying the finish, and B) because the high heat can undo the glue holding the board together, might not happen right away but could weaken it with time.
Thank you. Can I use an abrasive scrubby pad on the board, along with dish soap? What about Bar Keeper's Friend?
Does laying it flat, undisturbed, on a counter top work for drying?
The board will warp, because the underside stays moist, while the top will dry out. Leave it in an upright position for even drying.
Glad I asked. Would leaning it upright against the wall perpendicular to the counter work or do I need to have it in a dish rack?
You just need to have airflow so it can dry slightly leaning against a wall is fine, if it fits in a drying rack that's also fine
Thank you.
I'll be honest. I thought this was like a trick question and that the whole purpose of a cutting board was to get all cut up.