Gear Heads | Which Type of Cutting Board is Best for Your Kitchen?

okay and here i am unable to open a can i hope you cut this part [Music] a good knife is nothing without an equally good cutting board to use it on it's something that every cook should have some cooks see the ultimate cutting board as a thick unbudgeable wood or bamboo board others prefer to do their work on a lightweight no maintenance plastic board today we're going to explore both wooden and plastic cutting boards so you can decide which one is right for you up first lisa with our favorite wooden board okay so let's talk about cutting boards in general the biggest mistake we see in people's home kitchens is that they're using a cutting board that's just too small now if you're going to be cutting anything up this little thing which is about the size of a piece of copy paper not big enough look at the size of my eight inch chef knife with this board anything you cut on this is going to be rolling off you're going to be aggravated there's just not enough room to do what you need to do so this little thing save that for slicing up a wedge of lemon or something for your for your drink get a real cutting board we tested seven wooden and bamboo heavy duty cutting boards there are both end and edge grain boards edge grain is where the pieces are laid the long way end grain is where they're standing up which often people call butcher block we set a minimum size of 15 by 20 inches because we think that's the minimum size you should have for an all-purpose cutting board in your kitchen they're priced from about 85 to about 250 dollars and we put them through all kinds of kitchen tests every kind of thing that we'd normally do with the board but we also sent them to autodesk they use this robot arm with a brand new knife and it used the same amount of force and cut 5000 times on each board that's because one of the categories we looked at is durability we want a board that's not going to get cut to ribbons as you work on it and also we wanted to look at the effect it had on your knife you know a really hard board might damage your knife more than a softboard but a softboard might get kind of cut up the other criteria that we looked at was stability we don't want your board to jump or rock around on your countertop we want it to stay anchored we looked at ease of use you know and that's also in terms of the weight and how easy it was to pick up and finally we looked at clean up and maintenance how hard are they to take care of and keep them really performing in your kitchen for years to come this one has won the last couple of testings it's made by protiq it's made out of teak wood it's 18 by 24 inches and that is enough room to really stretch out and do what you got to do especially if you're you know we're all trying to eat more vegetables these days you want room to chop things and not have them bouncing all over the kitchen so we did a lot of cooking tests on each board we just wanted to know practical everyday things one of the things we did was chop herbs and so i have a bunch of cilantro here and i'm going to cut them on this board i'm going to just trim the ends get rid of those and be able to chop the rest of this very nicely we wanted to get a feel for how it felt to cut on this board and whether it felt comfortable whether the knife felt good on the board because one of the things that's really nice about a wooden board is that knife feel it feels good on your knife you're not hitting something hard you're not hitting something that's really unresponsive in some ways wood is kind of responding to your knife you can feel it not really biting in but just kind of gently interacting with the knife and it feels very natural so personally i really like that about a wooden cutting board one of the tests we like to do is to pound chicken breasts on the boards and this really speaks to not only their durability when you're whaling on them but also how stable are they are they rocking are they making it seem more precarious to be pounding this chicken breast we have our favorite pounder and the chicken breast i put it between two pieces of cling wrap it just keeps it a little bit neater and i'm going to pound it down to about a half inch thickness so everything in my kitchen is shaking but this board isn't going anywhere also really the ones that are too high and too thick we found that you're up here and you don't have the force you need you need that board to be in a nice position for smaller people like me to have some leverage on the pounding so this was really hitting a sweet spot with a nice height nice and heavy 15 pounds doesn't move around doesn't scoot you don't need a grip or mat under it or anything else and when you're pounding it it's not bowing and flexing like some plastic boards be tested this is thick it's going nowhere we like to use chipotle chilies and adobo and they create a big standing mess on most cutting boards so we want to know how badly do they get stained and how hard are they to clean up and get the stain off that is a big delicious smelling mess i'm gonna chop it up okay so wow these are nice and chopped and i've really smeared that sauce around cut it right into the board scrape it all up here we go well my hands are a little orange the board is you see a lot of stuff on the internet and there's a lot of rumors about wooden cutting boards being safer or less safe than plastic boards so we actually did that test we took boards and we sent them to a lab where they coated covered them with bacteria and watched for a couple of days to see whether some really propagated the bacteria more than others they washed them all with hot soapy water and checked again now here's what we found none of the boards were worse or better than others when you wash with hot soapy water the bacteria are killed this board really doesn't show stains as badly as some of the other ones especially some of the plastic ones that are white plastic you can see this little orange blot on there for much longer than you'd expect some of the wooden boards are very pale colored just a light cream color and you could see the stain on that but you know after a couple of washes most of the stains are gone i'm gonna take the cutting board over to the sink and give it a good scrub with hot soapy water you're not just washing one side or just trying to wipe it like it's a counter you want to get it in the sink scrub it with hot soapy water pat it dry and let it really air dry don't let it sit in a pool of water in your drain board or anything like that because wood is a natural material it will expand where it's wet and then as it dries it contracts and that can cause cracks it can make boards fail along the glue lines and we saw that a lot more with end grain boards where the pieces were vertical and stuck together this is mineral oil you can buy it in supermarkets and hardware stores it's you can drink it i mean it says here you can use it as a laxative but uh whatever you don't want to use your olive oil your vegetable oil on the board that oil will turn rancid and will create a bad smell you don't want that this is what this you want to use mineral oil it will keep the wood in great shape it will keep it moisturized just like your own skin it's a natural substance so you want to keep moisture in there the oil helps seal the board a little bit and it just keeps it nice and resilient you want to do it about once a month in the beginning and then you know every six months or so after that you can tell when you're looking at it if it looks a little dried out and it's so rewarding to actually put some of this oil on and then wipe it in and you want to get all the sides you want to do the sides the top the bottom all equally you don't want you know to ignore any part of it because that part will dry out and as you rub that in it's just you know it brings out the beautiful wood and it's it's really it's good for your hands too as your i sometimes use my hands to rub it in but you let it sit overnight you're good to go and it's a little bit like you know having a cast iron pan i mean that pan takes a little maintenance totally worth it this is old school and i think old school is pretty cool hannah's gonna try to convince you otherwise she's in her kitchen with a plastic cleaner [Applause] [Music] all right so i am here to talk to you about plastic cutting boards now they aren't as gorgeous as wooden cutting boards we need to get that out of the way our co-worker mia who wrote this review had a great line in it where she says this is not one you're going to be handing down to your grandchildren but that doesn't mean that there aren't benefits to having a plastic cutting board they are typically lighter which makes them easier to maneuver and clean they are also easier to handle because you don't have to deal with maintenance like oiling the board and whatnot they are also cheaper typically compared to a really gorgeous wooden cutting board they're also lastly dishwasher safe so you can put the whole thing in the dishwasher and make your clean up much easier so they're easier to maintain easier to clean easier to lift they're basically the easier option compared to a wooden cutting board we tested seven models in our lineup priced from about 20 bucks to about 70 bucks this is our winner right here from winco it is polypropylene and made with a little bit of polyethylene mixed in there too it's a plastic cutting board basically we had a lot of fails and a lot of triumphs in this testing it was a really interesting testing so first off some of the boards were too thin you need a medium thickness board and that's for durability because some of the thinner boards warped after washing me i washed these things 50 times in the dishwasher which is a lot but it's really important in this testing because we did see some warping and you want to make sure that your cutting board stays completely flush with the countertop because once you have warping then you have rocking and that is not a comfortable surface to cut on if it's moving and you don't feel secure and stable another important thing was grippiness another thing that will make it a pain to cut on is if the board feels like it's slipping and sliding around and you can use a gripper mat underneath you can also use a wet paper towel but if you don't have to that's even better you can see these red parts here they're tackier grippier material that makes it sit right on the countertop i'm really trying to push this here and i can't so that was awesome some of the boards we tested were a little over designed one came with two parts you know it's supposed to help with grippiness but we didn't like that we just want to deal with one piece we liked this little handle here but beyond that we preferred boards that just kept it simple okay so one of our tests we did was to chop up bunches of parsley we do this test for all of our knife testing our cutting board testing and we choose it specifically because of the way you need to cut parsley it's a slightly different motion you know you're really rocking your knife on the board and that um there's a lot of movement there and so we can look at is the board sliding around is it staying in place you'll see right now the board is not budging one bit i'm rocking my knife back and forth some of the other boards that motion that rocking chopping motion the board would scoot when you moved your knife forward the best thing you can say about a cutting board is when you forget that you're on one and this cutting board does that so another element of our durability testing was staining and odor retention this is important for all cutting boards wooden and plastic you cut something stinky on it or something very vibrantly colored you don't want your cutting board to smell bad or be stained for the rest of its lifetime we were particularly interested in the staining test with the plastic boards because if you've ever stored chili in a tupperware container you know that plastic can definitely hold on to smells it can stain really readily so we were curious to see how the boards would do in this test so all of the boards interestingly enough fared pretty well in this testing they didn't always come clean right away sometimes it took a couple washes for them to come clean but our favorite boards cleaned up slightly easier our winner here stained after the first wash one more wash and it was fine all right so our cutting board is nice and messy i'm gonna take peppers off and try to clean it as you can see super clean nice and white again really easy yes case you're wondering we do smell checks at all of these it's part of the job smells beautiful no staining or odor retention the wood versus plastic cutting boards i am in the wood camp i think they're wonderful surfaces to cut on they look beautiful they last forever as long as you do a little bit of maintenance and basically they're just so much more rewarding i don't put things as big as cutting boards in my dishwasher anyway so i would be hand washing either board and so i don't mind washing a wood board it's heavy it's durable and it's beautiful i would think of a plastic cutting board as the slightly easier option they're typically a little lighter a little easier to maneuver which means they're easier to clean they're not something you'd want to put a cheese board on necessarily but they're easier to use we have a great winner here we have a great winner in the wooden category so you really need to think about what style of cutting board is right for your lifestyle and like lisa said they're both sanitary that's a really important thing hot soapy water and you're good to go you just have to think about usability i think plastic little easier wood requires a little maintenance and they're both a good option i have to agree so for more information on all the products we mentioned and all the testing we did check out the links below yep and let us know any of your cutting board questions in the comments and make sure to hit that subscribe button you

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 248,258

Rating: 4.9369016 out of 5

Keywords: cutting boards, best cutting board, best wood cutting board, how to wash wood cutting board, plastic cutting boards, kitchen equipment, equipment reviews, americas test kitchen, cooks illustrated, cooks country

Id: GETfxYaBj3w

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020