Wooden Chopping Board Advice, Facts and Reviews
Traditional Wooden Cutting Boards are still the best so make sure you get the best Wooden Chopping Board
Wooden chopping boards have been used for many years and STILL they are the most widely used and loved chopping boards.
When you score a wooden chopping board it closes us the gap naturally unlike plastic chopping boards which can lead to grooves full of bacteria after use.
Wooden chopping boards are a must in any stylish house and are practical enough to be bashed around in a typical family household too!
What not to do with a Wooden Chopping Board: don't place any wooden utensil in the dishwasher; not only will the protective coating around the wood be damaged you will start splintering the wood allowing for more and more bacteria to breed in the open gashes. Also if you're doing any big chopping of say a rack of meat then switch to a plastic cutting board, you don't want big enough slices in your board that won't naturally close up.
You can protect your chopping board with protective oil such as the professional's choice Catskill's. Look after the board well and it'll last you more than a lifetime! If you want a stylish kitchen then there's no other choice; Jamie Oliver (a famous British chef) highly recommends wooden chopping boards as do many other popular chefs and celebrities.
Other uses are space savers; you can use a wooden plate to hold boiling hot pans and other heated items that may damage work surfaces or stain plastic work-tops. After use the board can be tucked vertically alongside other kitchen items freeing up the work surface.
One big problem whilst chopping food on wood is the potential staining of the wood. Oil rich foods such as tomatoes based beef chili absorb themselves in the wood's structure (i.e. they become part of the wood itself!) and despite chemical agents and a massive amount of scrubbing it still remains inside the board. Other foods that you may look out for are fruits; especially acid rich fruits such as blueberry's and red currants. I suggest you switch to a glass chopping board for these tasks as it's incredibly easy to clean.
New bamboo chopping boards are appearing in stores now; these are made officially with "compact grass" and after using one they may be the future of this all purpose kitchen item. They are certainly strong and are made of harder stuff but are more likely to snap, oh and of course the price tag is several times that of a tradition chopping board. I'll personally be very interested to see how they fair over time in the average household, check back on WoodenChoppingBoard.com in the future for it's first reviews!