Best way to clean cutting boards
There’s nothing better than creating a home cooked meal from scratch, using the season’s finest and freshest to bring the most flavor to the table. But unless you’re a vegetarian you probably also have raw meat you’ll be chopping now and then, and potentially leaving dangerous germs on your chopping block. Here’s what we suggest:
- Use different cutting boards for different purposes. One for non-meats and cooked items only, one for fish, and one for raw red and white meat. This will keep you from cross contaminating, and even if a germ or two is spread from one meat to the next, you’re going to thoroughly cook the meat and sterilize that stray germ.
- As the CDC recommends, soap and water is sufficient for most purposes, including hand washing and cleaning dishes and cutting boards. Hot, soapy water will do the trick for most kitchens. Just make sure you’re actually scrubbing and not just giving a cursory swipe. Alternatively, use your dishwasher and eco-friendly dishwashing detergent. The level of sustained heat in the dishwasher will kill most everything.
- A two-step process involving a spray of hydrogen peroxide followed by a spray of vinegar, with each left to sit for 10 minutes will properly disinfect. The key though is leaving it to sit. Even the best product is useless if not used correctly.
- Essential oil of lavender – about 20 drops to 1 cup of water in a spray bottle will disinfect quite well and leave your home smelling like spring year round! This is safe enough to spray directly on your kids’ toys and other food-prep surfaces, which makes it one of our favorites. In fact, studies show that essential oils may disinfect more effectively than phenol, which is what most disinfectants use today. Additionally, they don’t seem to contribute to the development of drug resistant strains of bugs like regular antibacterials do.
- Microwave it! I’m serious. If you’re concerned that your cutting board may be compromised and if it’s wood, put it in the microwave a zap it for 10 minutes. Your cutting board will be clean, but use caution getting it out – depending on the type of wood and level of moisture present it could be hot. This doesn’t work on plastic cutting boards though, so don’t waste your time.
Thanks to Mollie over at One/Change for a few of those tips. If you’re in the market for a new cutting board, opt for wood. New studies show that wood cutting boards don’t harbor bacteria the way plastic boards do. Due to the capillary of dry wood, microbes disappear below the surface where they die within a few hours. Plastic on the other hand allow microbes to sit on the surface where they can contaminate the next item. And please, avoid those “antibacterial” cutting boards like the plague – they’re treated with a pesticide and do you really want to introduce pesticides into your kitchen? Add in the fact that FDA is attacking the claims of the effectiveness of those pesticides, and it’s really not worth it.
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Comments
The lavender option sounds yummy!
PowderLover
Glad to read your recommendation for hydrogen peroxide.
Wood Cutting Board Care:
Peroxide is much more effectively used than chlorine bleach to sanitize wood. A few words are needed here about common chlorine bleach solutions. Bleach, even at full strength, is not always effective at sanitizing wood cutting boards, because the disinfectant quality of bleach can be neutralized by the organic composition of wood. A common sanitizing solution is one part bleach to 9 parts water. What many people do not know is that a diluted chlorine bleach solution is short-lived. It has a half-life (a 50% reduction in strength) of only about 2 hours. After 4 hours, it’s only at 25% strength, and so on.
Lee Chesson
Wood Cutting Boards, Lazy Susans and more…
this is a great website. Are you sure about the hydrogen instructions? I read Organic Cleaning (or some title like that) and the author said first vinegar and then hydrogen peroxide….
Good question, mvg. The order of the spray doesn’t actually matter. What matter is that you spray with one and then with the other. Do not mix the peroxide and vinegar in the same bottle though – it creates something called paracetic acid and studies have not been done on the effectiveness of paracetic acid in killing food-borne pathogens. Also, paracetic acid in high concentration can have adverse health effects, so keep the two in separate bottles.
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great tips to cleaning cutting board. It is necessity in our routine life. This is the great blog. I have viewed all the post and find very informative to me.
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