Yvette van Boven’s tip: this is the best way to clean your wooden cutting board
The better you clean your wooden cutting board, the longer you’ll enjoy it. No, it’s not always a fun chore. But you’ll be even more annoyed if you have to throw away your expensive board in no time. In her podcast Etenstijd! — which she presents together with Teun van de Keuken — Yvette van Boven shares tips on cleaning your wooden cutting board.
Properly maintaining your wooden cutting board is essential if you want to use it for as long as possible. That doesn’t mean you only need to give it some maintenance every once in a while. It means you need to clean it properly every time — especially if you’ve cut chicken or fish on it. And Yvette is immediately strict: your cutting board should stay far away from the dishwasher. The salt in dishwasher tablets dissolves everything in your board and gives it an ugly, grey sheen. So don’t do it. Otherwise, as Yvette herself says in the podcast, you’re really ”out of your mind”.
Cleaning your wooden cutting board: this is how you do it
Also don’t do this: let your board soak for a long time. That dissolves all the glued-together parts in the board. So, what should we do when we want to clean our wooden cutting board? Yvette recommends always washing the board after using it. Then sprinkle the board with salt and leave it overnight. The next day, wash the board again. This kills all the moulds on or in the board and keeps it looking as good as possible. (Did you know that the average cutting board contains more bacteria than a toilet seat? Yuck!)
A no-go: the glass cutting board
According to Yvette and Teun, the plastic cutting board is definitely not done anyway. We can probably guess why: those things are full of microplastics. So throw it away. But what the two podcast hosts dislike at least as much is the glass cutting board. ”If you want to get rid of your knives very quickly, I’d recommend cutting on one of those. Glass cutting boards are just… Why did people even come up with that?” Yvette wonders aloud in the podcast.
A wooden cutting board it is, then. But only for the enthusiasts among us who know how to look after it properly.
Also read:
- So that’s what the handle in cutting boards is for!
- Why you should also have several cutting boards at home
- Tip: this is why you should sprinkle salt on your candles
Source: episode 249 of the Etenstijd! podcast. Image of Yvette: oofverschuren
