Recommendation? What cutting board should I get?

[RokJok]

This hinoki cutting board is at least 25 years old. It's old, scarred, beat to hell & gone, and still my favorite material to cut food on. It's small'ish, so I wish it was a bit bigger.

Aesthetically, I appreciate the beauty & lovely art of the laminated face or end grain boards.

 

[West Šenkovec]

I’ve heard a few times that with wood, you aren’t supposed to mix meat & vegetables, due to hygiene reasons. Personally I use walnut cutting boards, and use two separate boards for meat & vegetables. But I’ve never had an endgrain board, so I can’t share any experiences regarding them.

I wouldn’t use plastic any more. They are unhygienic & unhealthy, due to the amount of micro (& macro) plastics they deposit in your food. I try to avoid plastic coming into contact with my food as much as possible these days, especially with any liquids.

In recent years you hear that often but the fact is that people did perfectly fine with wood cutting boards for thousands of years.
Some places have laws or sanitary inspections that demand plastic cutting board for commercial use. The explanation is that plastic boards can be soaked in bleach to sanitize them.
I find that ironic because many hipster places serve food on wood presentation plates that are literally a piece of circular flat cut wood. They even have bark on them. How is that ok but wooden cutting boards are not? It's ridiculous.

 

[NWFRS]

In recent years you hear that often but the fact is that people did perfectly fine with wood cutting boards for thousands of years.
Some places have laws or sanitary inspections that demand plastic cutting board for commercial use. The explanation is that plastic boards can be soaked in bleach to sanitize them.
I find that ironic because many hipster places serve food on wood presentation plates that are literally a piece of circular flat cut wood. They even have bark on them. How is that ok but wooden cutting boards are not? It's ridiculous.

I must be too poor. I’ve never been to a place that served a platter with bark on it!

Used to work for an American manufacturer of commercial food service equipment. Mostly stone hearth pizza ovens, rotisserie, water bath sous vide suites, Plancha grills, etc. Before that I built fruit handling systems for moving/sorting/grading/boxing fruit. There really are so many criteria for safe food handling here in America. Anything that can come into contact with food or water. Phillips screw heads only in certain applications to prevent bacteria hiding places. Particular grades of stainless steel only. Of course you see everything when you’re crawling around in a sixty-year-old fruit shed, but the rules are pretty stringent now. We had a real snazzy test kitchen in my last workplace. I never saw any wood cutting boards except for serving, I assumed it was because the plastic ones could go through the super hot commercial dish washer but I never asked.

Then when you visit foreign countries everything seems so unregulated. Spent time in Italy and their cooking equipment always seemed home made. Like it’s a point of pride. The last company I worked for wanted desperately to get into the Italian market, but I don’t think they ever sent any intelligent people there. Italians love building their own stuff when they can, and they’ve got so many incredible companies that already do it.

 

[BDubbs]

Probably not helpful but we use plastics that we can put in the dishwasher and still have separate meat and veg boards. Too worried about bacteria I guess.

 

[Greggy]

I have an end grain acacia board and a smaller plastic board for raw meats. Everything else goes to the acacia board. As said above, the acacia board is soft and is very gentle on blade edges. Good product. I apply mineral oil about every other month. One year old and looks new, except for a few grooves from knife edges. The wood is soft, and I like that.

 

[mentalknife]

An end grain cutting board/butcher block is going to be the only way to go for expensive knives. It's a buy once cry once deal.

Walnut is fine too. As a rule for something like that going with what the maker suggests is the best plan. If you have another wood preference you can ask.

This one is maple.

There is nothing about end grain that makes it different from edge grain other than high maintenance, and aesthetics. Folks need to stop mindlessly believing anything marketers claim.

Walnut and maple are fine, edge or end grain makes zero difference to anything other than looks and maintenance profile. Some think walnut looks better, and it does look nice, but from a performance standpoint, maple is the superior wood for this application and end grain or edge grain maple boards are both very nice and have a good balance of properties. I suppose not everyone is interested to try everything but I would say don't believe a word anyone tells you online. Spend your money and see for yourself. I've tried it all and I know what I like and what works for me. Edge grain maple is the "standard" for a lot of people.

As long as you're not using hard plastic or shitty PE, you're fine. Even a high end PE board, such as the Hasagawa PE blend, is okay, but will absolutely dull knives faster. Even a cheap and much harder and less forgiving wood like Acadia is just fine as long as you understand what you're getting. When you cut on acadia it feels nothing like the forgiving maple and walnut boards. Still better than plastic. Most folks who know their stuff generally don't suggest or prefer Acadia but I've done extensive testing on all of these things and while it is harder and does knives faster than maple, it's just fine too. Holds up well, but seems prone to cracking over time more so than some other woods. idk why I'm spending so much time on something I don't generally recommend. Anyway, Teak is a nice middle ground also for many people. These things hold up much better than a lot of other wood and they are by far one of the lowest maintenance options in terms of real wood. If you actually measure it, they do dull knives slightly faster than say maple, which is kind of the gold standard for a lot of that stuff, it's still very good, and overall very good. This is one I would suggest to try. The main issue with teak is its inconsistency, meaning in the wood grain so I'd only buy high quality items with wood. There's also those Japanese rubber boards, which are expensive, and you should know what you're getting into. The wood like Asahi is probably most folks best bet from that bunch, very low maintenance and lasts literally forever. Not cheap tho. I'd avoid anything rubber that isn't Japanese, I tested a few and they dulled knives faster than anything else by far. The "soft rubber" type Japanese boards won't be suitable for many folks because you can't do rocking style cuts on them due to friction but are otherwise great and low maintenance too.

 

[mentalknife]

I have an end grain acacia board and a smaller plastic board for raw meats. Everything else goes to the acacia board. As said above, the acacia board is soft and is very gentle on blade edges. Good product. I apply mineral oil about every other month. One year old and looks new, except for a few grooves from knife edges. The wood is soft, and I like that.

Acadia is one of the hardest and least forgiving woods they make cutting boards out of. It's still fine to use, but I have no idea what makes you think it's soft. Try cutting on a walnut or maple board and get back to me. It's night and day. Feels like velvet in comparison. The acadia is fine though and it's cheap. It holds up well and requires minimal maintenance compared to either of the other woods I threw out. I'd watch out for cracks over time though, every acadia end grain board seems to end that way.

 

[mentalknife]

This hinoki cutting board is at least 25 years old. It's old, scarred, beat to hell & gone, and still my favorite material to cut food on. It's small'ish, so I wish it was a bit bigger.

Aesthetically, I appreciate the beauty & lovely art of the laminated face or end grain boards.

Hinoki is interesting and smells nice, but it's not necessarily as forgiving as many folks make it out to be. I'd say it's about the level of teak in terms of how that aspect feels to cut on, not on the level of walnut or end grain maple in terms of that cushy luxurious feeling. You can for sure notice the knife edge going into the wood quite a bit and a lot of friction generated with these. Not very conducive to western style rocking cutting I'd say but it feels fairly similar to the soft rubber Hasegawa type boards. The edge seems to want to grab and stick to the wood. The other issue with it is it's more prone to scarring than a lot of other more common woods. Hard to justify it considering the costs in North America especially larger sizes vs other more locally sourced woods but it's cool and interesting. I enjoy it as well. MTC kitchen sells some nice ones including a nice little small one that's handy for anyone who wants to try it out.

 

[Danke42]

There is nothing about end grain that makes it different from edge grain other than high Maintenace, and aesthetics. Folks need to stop mindlessly believing anything marketers claim.

Walnut and maple are fine, edge or end grain makes zero difference to anything other than looks and Maintenace profile. Some think walnut looks better, and it does look nice, but from a performance standpoint, maple is the superior wood for this application and end grain or edge grain maple boards are both very nice and have a good balance of properties. I suppose not everyone is interested to try everything but I would say don't believe a word anyone tells you online. Spend your money and see for yourself. I've tried it all and I know what I like and what works for me. Edge grain maple is the "standard" for a lot of people.

As long as you're not using hard plastic or shitty PE, you're fine. Even a high end PE board is okay, but will absolutely dull knives faster. Even a cheap and much harder and less forgiving wood like Acadia, which when you cut on it feels nothing like the soft and forgiving maple and walnut boards, is just fine as long as you know what you're getting. Most folks who know their stuff generally don't suggest or prefer Acadia but I've done extensive testing on all of these things and while it is harder and does knives faster than maple, it's just fine too. Holds up well, but seems prone to cracking over time more so than some other woods. idk why I'm spending so much time on something I don't generally recommend. Anyway, Teak is a nice middle ground also for many people. These things hold up much better than a lot of other wood and they are by far one of the lowest Maintenace options in terms of real wood. If you actually measure it, they do dull knives slightly faster than say maple, which is kind of the gold standard for a lot of that stuff, it's still very good, and overall very good. This is one I would suggest to try.
ofc there's also those Japanese rubber boards, which are expensive and you should know what you're getting into. The wood like Asahi is probably most folks best bet from that bunch, very low Maintenace and lasts literally forever. Not cheap tho. I'd avoid anything rubber that isn't Japanese, I tested a few and they dulled knives faster than anything else by far.

I think they may have figured out the advantages of end grain long before marketers got their foot in the door.

Sure there are disadvantages; it's heavier, more expensive, and needs to be oiled more often. But if you're already in the world of decent kitchen cutlery then those are minor.

But on the other hand if you want to be super efficent just use scissors. They're like a double knife and no board required!

 

[mentalknife]

I think they may have figured out the advantages of end grain long before marketers got their foot in the door.

Sure there are disadvantages; it's heavier, more expensive, and needs to be oiled more often. But if you're already in the world of decent kitchen cutlery then those are minor.

But on the other hand if you want to be super efficent just use scissors. They're like a double knife and no board required!

Well "they" say a lot of things but there's never any actual evidence presented to validate the assertions. So. I tested it myself with several kinds of wood using basic non alloyed carbon steel of high hardness, shirogami #2, because thats the kind of steel that makes the most sense to use for this. Comparting the same wood made zero measurable difference in terms of how quickly it created dulling by any mechanism, but mostly abrasion, regardless of it being oriented to edge or end grain. Zero. So the conclusion is, end grain looks cool, and it's higher Maintenace, but in terms of supposed benefits a lot of people claim about them, I see zero evidence for it.

 

[Danke42]

Well you've clearly done your homework in a scientific manner.

Anyway.

 

[littleknife]

Mentalknife,
I don’t want to argue just for the sake of arguing, but many things you say are just not true.
I don’t know what wood species do you call “acadia”, but in the USA “acacia” cutting boards ate most commonly made of monkey pod wood, which is softer than maple or walnut.
I have maple, rubber wood, beechwood, teak wood and acacia (monkey pod) wood cutting boards (severalnpf each wood species) and acacia is consistently the softest among those.

I Europe “acacia wood” frequently means the wood of black locust tree (Robinia pseudoacacia): a quite hard wood, only slightly softer than olive wood. That is too hard for cutting boards.
I wonder if your “acadia” wood board is actually black locust one.
True acacias are even harder, they are good for serving boards at most.

Regarding teak: it is very resistant to moisture but frequently contains big silica inclusions which will dull your edges right away.
Some plantation grown young teak trees produce wood with less inclusions: if you are lucky to get such a board, they are OK.

Beechwood can be quite hard, harder than maple or walnut. I would not use beechwood cutting boards with hard keen edged knives.

Maple wood is softer and has an even grain. In end grain orientation it is definitely more edge-friendly than in edge grain orientation.
Natural wood is not completely uniform regarding surgace hardness, but rather a composite of harder and softer areas. The softer areas are more abundant in end grain orientation than in edge grain one. The difference between the two sections is usually larger in harder woods. For maple the difference can be still significant. For walnut, monkey pod wood and hinoki this difference is less important because they are increasingly softer compared to maple.
So what you are saying about the end grain orientation not being important is just plain wrong.
My personal experience is also in agreement with the general consensus that the end grain orientation is the most edge-friendly for kitchen knives.
Just my $0.02 and YMMV.

 

[mentalknife]

I go by what gets marketed and sold as acadia wood. Go on Amazon and search for the best selling "Acadia" boards, those are likely the ones I used in the tests or something similar. When I google acadia wood, what I get is something that's stated to have a Janka score of 2300. Which is very hard indeed. That is clearly what I'm talking about and clearly the stuff that's sold in North America as "Acadia" wood cutting boards. There's a reason you can get an end grain acadia board say 20x15 inches and nearly 2" wide for like $50 on amazon. The cheapest you could find for maple is much higher, easily double the price or more, same for other woods including teak. I'd guess there's a reason for that.

As for teak, you're not wrong, totally at least, and I said the same thing. It's the inconsistency that's the issue with teak. This is why you should avoid them unless you know it's high quality, ideally you'd want to see what you're getting before you buy it otherwise you might be in for a surprise in terms of the inconsistency of the grain but also variations in the color, ie that hideous orange. As far as "omg it will dull your edge instantly." That's just pure nonsense. Teak are some of the best selling cutting boards in the US today and they generally have good reviews from everyone. I think some might not realize that using a knife on a cutting board is not like what you do when you're woodworking. Folks who have worked with teak notice it dulls woodworking tools quicker than some other woods but it's not 1 to 1 in how that works on a cutting board. It does dull faster than materials like maple or walnut, but it's a tradeoff with being much lower maintenance and whatnot. Saying it will dull knives instantly is nonsense. You can take a knife with a basic carbon steel that has very little abrasion resistance, use it on teak, and it will retain it's fine edge, that just means very aggressive "bite" the kind of edge that can do things like catch a hair and cut it, for over over 50 full force full contact cuts on the teak board. There are other boards made of materials like plastic and cheap rubber that will wreck that edge so it has to be totally reground on stones after literally 4 or 5 similar cuts. Teak is a just fine material for cutting boards. It has it's pros and cons like everything else.

Far as edge grain or end grain, it's an up hill thing because this is a claim that you see EVERYWHERE. Everyone makes that claim. Zero evidence for it. No one cares. Because it doesn't really matter, but anyone who has tested, as I have personally, so has Americas test kitchen, finds that it's not true. Sarcasm aside, I'm pretty sure America's Test Kitchen tested the same idea, quite "scientifically" actually (with a robot and microscope so you know it's legit lol), and they found it makes no difference in terms of edge wear either. For me, it's hard to believe that those with proclivity to accept assertions as fact in the absence of evidence are particularly rationally minded more generally. But appealing to authority is usually a decent strategy of making a convincing argument. I personally don't really care who believes what, I'm just going to put what I know to be true out there and folks can make their own minds. It's not really a big deal, just a thing which annoys me to no end. It's just accepted by people that end grain is "better on edges" than edge, and if you ask for evidence the only thing anyone can provide is very naive analogies with straws suggesting when you cut on an edge grain you cut into those, but on end grain you cut between them. Absurd to me that anyone would believe such obvious nonsense. When you cut on wood, you're cutting into the wood. That's all there is to it. Which I'd guess is why anyone that trys to measure the difference in abrasive wear to a knife edge between the two orientations of the same kind of wood finds the same result, which is no discernable difference.



I like end grain boards too. Both of the main boards I have on my counter at this time are end grain. They look nice.

 

[pyreaux]

Old yankee

 

[Blade Lab]

The only scientific testing I've seen was done by Dr. Kraichuk from Knife Grinders Australia. He found that the best board for preserving the cutting edge is one made from high density polypropylene.

http://knifegrinders.com.au/SET/Chopping_Boards.pdf

 

[mentalknife]

The only scientific testing I've seen was done by Dr. Kraichuk from Knife Grinders Australia. He found that the best board for preserving the cutting edge is one made from high density polypropylene.

http://knifegrinders.com.au/SET/Chopping_Boards.pdf

Its interesting but there's a lot of methodological idk what to call them, errors in equating this to the real world. The tests Americas Test Kitchen conducted were more applicable to how real humans use real knives and cutting boards. He's not slicing across the board, he's cutting into the board, aka chopping, notice he doesn't call them cutting boards, he calls them chopping boards, because that's exactly what he did, chopping rather than what I and ATK tested which was slicing aka cutting. Also measuring based on a bess tester, using a soft stainless steel that will more easily deform ie roll rather than dull evenly with abrasion across the whole edge the way a harder low abrasion resistance non alloyed carbon steel would. The bess score could vary widely just based on if you hit a spot that had a roll v. didnt because the bess tester does not test a whole edge it only tests one little spot on the edge. This is why I generaly don't put much stock into bess tests. The tests I did were more concerned with abrasive wear to steel, by sliding the edge over the surface of the board under a set load. Using a basic carbon steel which scores very low in catra test made the test quicker and more accurate, then testing for edge keenness in a wholistic and practical way rather than the highly flawed bess test, also to a high degree of sensitivity. I didn't wait for the wood to totally dull the knives, that would have taken ages. All I need was for the knife to lose it's "fine edge." Meaning knives at the end of the test were for all intents and purposes still very sharp but no longer able to do something like say catch and cut a human hair. The only thing really interesting I found was that end and edge grain makes no difference, and that certain syntenic boards dull knives VERY aggressively. The high end Japanese synethic boards worked exactly like they were advertised to, which was claimed to be on par with wood, they all performed just as good as Hinoki or Teak wood. Any wood I tested was fine, even the Acadia, but some for sure dull faster than others. I'd say if you want less maintence, go with Teak, If you don't mind more maintenance and just want a tool to cut on go with maple. Obviously this is for North America, were we have maple and walnut easily available. In Japan I imagine that's more exotic and stuff like the Hinoki is cheaper and mor common.

 

[Blade Lab]

Lots of good points. I think Wootz's testing was specifically concerned with the meat processing industry, because he had a big sharpening business with them. I suspect that bulk meat processing involves a lot more chopping than most home chefs do.

I also suspect that a lot of the edge damage home chefs do isn't from cutting at all, but rather comes from scraping the blade sideways across the board to gather the bits that have already been cut. I keep trying to get my wife to quit doing that -- use the SPINE for that! -- but she doesn't listen.

 

[Aardvark]

I also suspect that a lot of the edge damage home chefs do isn't from cutting at all, but rather comes from scraping the blade sideways across the board to gather the bits that have already been cut. I keep trying to get my wife to quit doing that -- use the SPINE for that! -- but she doesn't listen.

Hmm, hadn't considered that. Thanks.

 

[scdub]

I suppose not everyone is interested to try everything but I would say don't believe a word anyone tells you online.

But… that’s kinda the point of this place, no??? I’m not going to stake my life on a few opinions, but gathering multiple opinions of folks that are particularly interested in the topic is pretty effective…

Anyway, I really like this side-grain monkey pod(?) board as it has stayed perfectly flat and hasn’t split after years of use. Not a hard wood.

Treated with tung oil it doesn’t absorb much water either.

 

[jc57]

I have some decent maple edge grain boards and a work table whose whole surface is a maple end-grain cutting block. I find that in general what I actually use are some hinoki wood edge grain boards. They are extremely light and the wood is soft and gentle on knife edges. Easy to take over to the sink and wash up. The brand I use is Shun (same people who make the knives), but any maker is fine.

I have them in a couple of sizes with a spare still in factory shrink wrap if I ever wear out one of the others.

RokJok , that one you have looks to have a lot of character! You can, if you want, just sand it down with a sanding sponge or block to clean it up a bit, rinse off the resulting dust from sanding, let it dry, then apply a few rounds of mineral oil or board butter and you're all set. It's just a wooden board after all.