Kitchen Cutting Board

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mr_dove

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Apr 12, 2004
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I just got a new Kershaw Shun as my main kitchen knife. I usually replace my cutting board every few years and its about time to replace it again.

What kind of board should I be looking at for a Shun? Something that doesn't actually NEED replacing every few years would be nice too.

Bamboo is something I've been seeing recently and I'm pretty curious about it.
 
What kind of board are you using that you have to replace it every few years?
 
I've used both wood and the soft-ish plastic ones. The wood ones (about 1 inch thick) get warped and the plastic ones get cut up from the cutting and eventually discolor.

I've considered the corian type cutting board material as well. Seems like it won't warp or get cut marks on it.
 
I love the bamboo cutting boards. I just bought a couple, and they seem to hold up to abuse better than my other wooden ones.

Go out to the Spyderco Outlet on Youngfield Street. they used to carry a pretty good selection (give them a call first).
 
I have three bamboo cutting boards and I have found that they offer both benefits and drawbacks. The main benefit is that it is a hard wood that resists gouging which in turn prevents salmonella poisoning. Another benefit is that the hard wood is super easy to clean because wiping it is always very easy because there is no need to look for small ruts forming in the wood.
The boards that I have have been laminated so that the underside is formed of a single piece , this makes it very easy to clean even after I have been cutting up a just defrosted chicken breast. Overall the board is nice to use and easy to clean. The downside is that both of these elements, hardness and clean surface, make it very easy to see the wear on the board surface. In this respect the aesthetic of the bamboo board suffers, so should you be wanting to create a bamboo look throughout the kitchen (as I did) you should be aware that your boards will quickly look like someone went arts and crafts crazy with an exacto knife.
 
Wood cutting boards should be rubbed down with mineral oil once in awhile. This usually prevents warping. Supposedly, the tannic acid in oak cutting boards is a natural antibacterial agent. Nevertheless, washing them with antibacterial soap after cutting raw meat is a good idea. Also, wood cutting boards don't make that awful sound when a knife is drawn across them.
 
I like plastic ones. Yes, they to get cut up and eventually have to be discarded. But, until then, they're cheap and they go through the dishwasher. As a result, I can have six or eight of them and use a clean board for each thing I chop and then put 'em all through the dishwasher for a through disinfecting cleaning before their next use.
 
I've made a few in my time-

DSC01535.jpg


This is end cut maple and one of my better boards. :D
 
mr_dove said:
I just got a new Kershaw Shun as my main kitchen knife. I usually replace my cutting board every few years and its about time to replace it again.

What kind of board should I be looking at for a Shun? Something that doesn't actually NEED replacing every few years would be nice too.

Bamboo is something I've been seeing recently and I'm pretty curious about it.
Click to expand...

UHMW nylon makes a good cutting board. You can find cut offs on ebay pretty cheap. Get it thick like around an inch and when it gets scarred up just run a belt sander over the surface with a 100 or 120 grit belt. You can round over the edges with a router and cut it with a circular or jig saw.
 
I'm with Gollnick on this one. You can pick up a plastic/nylon cutting board at the discount store for 2-8 bucks, depending on size. Buy 4 or 5 so there's always a clean one available, even with 2 or 3 in the dishwasher getting deSalmonella-ized. When one gets a little worn, just replace it. They may look a little out of place next the Kershaw Shun bamboo knife block, but who cares? It seems to me that something like Corian would be tough on knife edges, but that's just a guess.
 
Thick end grain hardwood cuttingboards - there is still no substitute.

They cost a little more up front but like a good quality knife it will stay nice much longer and with a little care it will reward its users for many years.

They also have been proven in to be less prone to spreading contamination than plastics. Counterintuitive I know, but evidently plastic cutting boards are very benificial to bacterial growth where as wood cutting boards are not.

Just don't cut on glass if you care at all about your knives.
 
I was by the Spyderco Outlet a couple of weeks ago and they still had the bamboo ones then. They look nice and are supposed to wear very well.
I like the ablility of plastic boards to go through the dishwasher. If you are
concerned about cross-contamination, I saw someone label the edges of
the plastic boards. One for poultry,beef,veggies, etc.

Bruceter
 
I purchased my first bamboo board this year, and I'll be sticking with this material from now on. It has all of the advantages that have previously been mentioned. In addition, I find it to be much lighter than a board made from another type of wood would be at the same size. Bamboo does start to show nicks and scratches after a while, but I find that they add character. Mine gets a mineral oil wipedown once a week, and it's holding up fine after almost a year.

Cheers,

Mike
 
There are reasons that wooden cutting boards are illegal in most commercial kitchens. In a butcher shop where cross-contamination transfers salmonella from one meat to another your customer generally cooks your product before consumption. In that case a wooden chopping block might be defenseable. In a kitchen it is easy to accidentally cross-contaminate a food that is not going to be cooked. Even if you reserve one cutting board for poultry, one for beef, and one for produce you can bet that others in your household will not be so careful. The professional way to clean cutting boards is by soaking them in a bleach solution. Most other disinfectants only slow bacteria down, they don't kill it. Plastic is the only really safe way to go. The bleach also help reduce discoloration of the cutting board. You can even scrub with Comet once in awhile.

In addition, soft plastic is the only truely edge-friendly surface to cut on. Any wood that holds up well does so because it has hard silicates in the fiber which will wear down your edge. Soft wood collects bacteria and will get bleached out by strong disinfectants. Whatever you do, don't use Corian. It is much too hard and will damage your edge.

I like to use soft plastic cafeteria trays. They stack compactly and keep juices from running onto the counter. They are soft enough to protect your edge, yet they are designed to tolerate hot water and disinfectants. They come in multiple colors so you can color code them by function. I still keep a few other types of cutting boards, but the trays are my favorites.
 
Plastic boards blunt the edge much faster then an end grain butchers block. Yes plastic may be better in catering placers where they will always be wet but at home where you can look after it wood is often cleaner. They are so much nicer then thin slabs of wood that might warp or crappy plastic tat
Salt and scrape them to clean.
 
Here are my 2 cents:
- I like plastic because it's easy to maintain, and more importantly, it is soft-ish, relatively speaking, so it's a lot easier on your knives.
- Wood and bamboo look nicer, are more work to maintain and keep clean, and beat the crap out of your knives.

FWIW, bamboo is not a hardwood. It is a grass. If I was going to use natural cutting boards I would use bamboo. A bamboo is at full maturity in a few years, versus decades for a tree. Plus it's harder than maple. Looks beautiful, too. We have used 2 Pampered Chef bamboo spoons to cook everything in our kitchen for years and they are way better than wooden spoons. The grain doesn't separate and get fuzzy like wood. Very cool stuff!
 
I use plastic, and some of them are really old. I can't imagine wearing them out, I don't significantly cut into them. Most of my kitchen knives however are very efficient cutter and thus the force I use is really light. If you are going through cutting boards so fast I would suggest that you may want to optomize the knives a little more.

-Cliff
 
Wood boards harbor enormous amounts of bacteria approx. 1/8" below the surface where they are drawn by capillary action. Oddly this makes them relatively safe - the top dries quickly and no microbes remain, unlike plastic which generally absorbs nothing. Just don't chop too hard on that board and let the bugs out - and if it gets a split throw it out straight away, regardless of the cost!
Quickest way to treat either is a swipe with cider vinegar - nice, natural and clean! You can also trat your board to a quick dose of radiation - 30 seconds in the microwave should kill all those pesky bugs!
Be aware that most timber is to some lesser or greater degree toxic to humans
The ones you may most commonly encounter which should be avoided (for ingestion and dust) are:
Birch
Blackwood
Cashew
Cocobolo
Ebony
Greenheart
Iroko
Mansonia
Maple for some people
Mimosa
Oleander
Myrtle
Olivewood
Padauk
Peroba
Purpleheart
Rosewood
Satinwood
Snakewood
Walnut Black
Yew

There's plenty of others which have lower or rarer effects to some percentage of the population. Are you scared yet? Decided plastic may be the way after all?
Good news -I believe hoop pine is perfectly safe and kind to the blades edge.

Have fun! :D
 
I have plastic and wood. I usually wind up using the plastic because it is very knife-edge friendly and dishwasher friendly.

The wood boards look great though, I admit looks is the one department where wood wins hands down. If you want the creme de la creme wood board that positively will not warp, that you can refinish over and over if you care to maintain a "new" look, take a peek here:

http://www.johnboos.com/boosblock/jbc0002.asp
 
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