Cleaning Chopping Boards - DWC Magazine: Strong Women, Strong Voices

Cleaning Chopping Boards

By Mike Devlin

You no doubt have at least one chopping board, but when and how should you clean it, when should you replace it, and which type should you be using? Let's dive into this.

Let's get the professional kitchen approach to this out of the way. We use hard, durable, plastic chopping boards, which are not the best (more on that later), and there are two major reasons for this. The plastic used to create these things can withstand the high temperature of an industrial dishwasher, plus they can be coloured, so there can be no cross contamination (red for raw meat, yellow for cooked meat, brown for veg, and so on).

But what is best? 

That would be wood (I did a homonym!).

It's just more hygienic, and sustainable. Go look at your chopping board; it has marks in it, doesn't it? Wood is better for this and is easily cleanable. But please go with sustainable wood, like bamboo, not something that takes 50 years to grow. 

But how do we clean it? 

After every use just clean it down, but every month, mix 1 tbsp of bleach into a gallon of cold water, and let it sit in it for an hour. Rinse, and you are good to go.

Old and tired (no, not you or I, the board).

Your board will suffer with constant chopping and slicing, and no matter how well you look after it, it will get stained and look like you dropped it in a dirty puddle.

Ideally, you should change it once a year, but this is dependant upon how often you use it, and what has been on it. Obviously in a professional kitchen they are abused on a daily basis, but probably not yours.

Personal opinion: I hate glass and marble boards. May look nice, but they are certainly not conducive to a nice chopping feel (and they tend to be really expensive, particularly marble - marble rolling pins are great though).

There you go then. Pretty much everything you need to know about chopping boards. That was easy, wasn't it?

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1 comment

Love this!!! I look forward to Mike’s helpful hints and recipes. Thank you so much.

Charlotte Mckissick

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