Thank you for the recommendation! The price is not too bad either, i might try to hunt to see if anyone in Malaysia retails it!
I started with a chef's choice. They are tanks and lasted me a while. It's a great easy step that I recommend to anyone looking to keep their fingerprints and digits in place.
What are you guys using for cutting boards? Wood, synthetic, thick, or thin what's your favorite? And as a bonus round question: how do you keep them from "walking" on the counter?
I've got some basic bamboo boards. I put a thin towel under my board to keep them still. A thick towel works fine too, but you have to have a nice sharp knife to counteract the shock absorption. My boards are easy to maintain. After 2+ years I have only had to condition them every 2-3 months. This next time I'll probably run a quick 220 grit sanding over it to smooth out some of the slices that are in the center of the board.
@Congarranza I've got a couple of lonely bamboo boards (came with knife purchases) that I've never used because I've worried about maintaining them and keeping them sanitized. I've read about using a mild bleach solution on them but they would almost certainly require doing something to replenish the wood so it doesn't dry out, crack and cause even more problems. I was using some thin plastic mats that are rubberized on the backside but they have warped over time (similar to these). There's one particular type of the thicker plastic ones I like but it's hard to find that variety of plastic in the size I like. It's semi translucent white not white like "ice box white" and holds up to cleaning well and doesn't deteriorate and become sticky. I'm on a quest to find one about 1" thick and a bit more square than the longer rectangle ones I've seen over here. For the slipping problem I used to use an old school jar opener pad that was thin and flat but they're hard to find these days.
Don't worry about the boards. Don't let them soak in a sink and do not put them in a dishwasher. I do all my prepwork next to the sink. After I'm done, I run it under water, use my hand to spatula and food remains away, and set it back on the counter. I wash it last after doing all the other dishes so the soap is watered down. Because of the first hand rinse it takes two or three scrubs with a sponge to get it "clean." If you are treating it at regular intervals, you can see the water being kept out of the wood. If you really don't want them to get ruined, you can follow the cleaning with a dry towel to remove as much moisture before air drying.
For good or ill I've got no dishwasher (microwave either for that matter) so no worries about the damage that could cause. I may have to drag one out and hit it with that Bee Kind wood finisher I've been using and try it out for a while. Do you even use it for poultry/meat prep?
Negative. I'm vegetarian. From my kitchen experience, you might want a tough plastic board with gutter for the juices. This will also allow you to deep clean the funk that can come from animals.
Apologies, yes that would make sense then; veggies on the wood, plastic for others. One set of boards I have use the generally accepted color coding for various kitchen processes but I'm not usually that strict.
No need to apologize, you didn't do anything wrong. I know there are ways to deep clean wooden or bamboo boards that involve vinegars and such, but I'm old fashioned and would lean to plastic boards and a chemical compounds for animal stuff. I think it's easier to do more often and pairing it with cleaning counters, sink, and stovetop is a "two birds and one stone" duty.
I hear it a lot everywhere I go. I tend to stop and remind people they did not do anything wrong to apologize for. Here in the states, it brings people a smile knowing there are still nice people in this world.
I love how deep this thread is, I just caught up on it. I only have wood cutting boards right now: a couple of bamboo boards, and a maple/walnut/jatoba board that I made a year and a half ago (pic below). I don't cook much meat really, but plastic boards make me think of slowly chopping very small plastic particles in with you food, which doesn't seem great either. My knives are pretty basic, but I keep them decent with a honing stone. I keep my woodworking chisels sharp enough to shave with, but I'm not that intense with my kitchen setup
I'm looking into an end grain cutting board. That one is nice!! You are right about the plastic boards, but I only used them in a professional setting many moons ago. Ingesting plastic is horrible! I was curious about your chisel vs knife sharpness. I bet if you traveled to work with a knife roll of your kitchen blades, you'd be more inclined to laser them up at work than at home. That worked for me when I was working a kitchen for a bit. That's when cooking is fun for me: sharp, surgical blades!
I mentioned before about a certain kind of plastic that I like for my boards. It's not quite a "self healing" type but similar. It's not brittle at all and cuts into it are malleable, for lack of a better word. On other types of plastic boards I'd sand them down if they got too 'groovy' but with this other type of plastic I've not had to do that in a while. I'm kind of curious if you keep all your knives "surgical" or if you also have a more grabby edge on some. I've noticed that for me sometimes that's a better edge partly depending on what I'm cutting but also how; push cut vs slide cut. Also curious what you used in your knife roll for sharpening/honing on the go. I've been working on putting together a small roll and have been experimenting with the contents including incidentals like blade covers, note taking items, etc. Any suggestions on what might be a good setup? I'm using a small Messermeister tri-fold 8 slot roll so not a ton of space.
Endgrain is the way to go for certain, they'll just last waay longer if you take care of them. The one pictured above could actually really use a refresh... I've been meaning to give it a quick sand, and then reseal it again. It takes a couple extra cut/glue steps to make them (compared to sidegrain), but I think its worth it in the end (or worth the extra bucks). I've used coconut oil to finish it in the past, at least in part because I had it on hand already, so it was the easy option. I know it can go rancid, but I think coconut oil takes longer than some other food oils to go rancid, so in my experience if you don't go super heavy on it, the finish will wear away before it goes bad (thats been the case for this board, at least). Maybe one day I'll regret it, but so far so good ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I've thought about sharpening up my knives in the workshop, but it would be a little tough to do well. I use a benchtop grinder equipped with a white stone (120 grit, if I remember correct), and a felt pad that I charge with honing compound to get the job done. Most of my jigs are built to sharpen chisels/gouges/whatever, but I think with a bit of tinkering I could set them up to hone my kitchen knives. I feel like the best way to do it would be to use a honing rod to get it reasonably sharp, and then carefully hit it on the felt wheel after that, using a simple platform jig to steady the blade at the right angle. Taking a knife straight to the white stone seems like an easy way to mess up a blade, unless you had some proper jigs to ensure you stay super consistent as you work across the whole blade. Really... I should take the time to sharpen my bread knife if anything. That thing has been neglected, and its starting to show!
When you say "honing rod" are you talking about a "steel" or a sharpening rod like a ceramic or diamond rod? Normally steels are more for maintaining/straightening the edge not really sharpening since they don't really remove metal or remove very little. As for your bread knife if it's serrated the Spyderco Sharpmaker or tapered diamond rod will work on that but it takes a while.
Yea, steel rod, my mistake. It doesn't remove much, but after some passes if I wipe down the blade's edge there are definitely metal filings on the cloth, so it is taking a little off at least. And yea... the time it'll take to sharpen each tooth on the bread knife is what has put me off doing it thus far. It still works fine for now though! On that note, I've been making my own bread lately. Bread machines are easy and awesome, I'm hoping to find the time to get some sourdough going soon!
Yah man!!! Sourdough is the jam when is comes to bread making. Some bakeries have their starter in a lock box to keep others from it. It's crazy like tama paint secrets!
Typically they are surgical. They get somewhat more of a grab on the edge after a few passes of the honing rod about a week or two after the stones. Near the bolster it stays pretty toothy and grabs well onto tomatoe skins. My only serrated knife is a 150mm utility knife that I have probably used 10 times in 3 years. I don't know when I'll ever try to figure out which way I'll sharpen it. That one will probably be worth taking to a farmers market and having some punk sharpen it for a few bucks.