SANITATION Safety issues affect choice of cutting board
Bacteria lurk in the deep grooves of plastic.
By JANET K. KEELER
SCRIPPS HOWARD
We've certainly gotten ourselves into a dither about cutting boards.
We regard them suspiciously. What bacterial evil lurks on the surface or just below? Are we risking serious illness every time we make a chicken salad with celery?
Forget paper or plastic, we want to know if we should buy wood or plastic. Wood looks better, but we've heard plastic is more sanitary.
Tempered glass would seem to offer permanent resistance to bacteria, but the sound of a knife hitting glass recalls nails skating across a chalkboard. Separate boards for raw meat and everything else appear imperative. But wouldn't disposable cutting sheets keep us confidently out of harm's way?
Whoa, that's a lot of worry about a generally innocuous piece of kitchen equipment. It's also a lot of emphasis on one aspect of selecting a cutting board. Storage, aesthetics, usage and cost should also be considered.
Truth is, almost any cutting board is safe, as long as it is cleaned and cared for properly. Even wood, which is most commonly criticized as a germ-monger, is back in favor.
In fact, wood may be better than plastic, says Mary Keith, a food, nutrition and health specialist at the Hillsborough County, Fla., Cooperative Extension.
"The most recent research says wood, as long as it's hardwood and not cracked, is as safe, if not safer, than plastic," Keith says.
Scarred or deeply grooved plastic cutting boards should be thrown away, she says. Once bacteria get into the grooves of a plastic board, soap or diluted bleach solutions can't get through to kill them.
"Wood will expel the bacteria and let the antibacterial cleaning agents in," Keith says. Even so, cracked wooden boards should be discarded unless they can be sanded smooth again.
To clean plastic or wooden boards, scrub with hot water and soap, then sanitize in the dishwasher or with a solution of 1 teaspoon bleach mixed with 1 quart water. Commercial disinfectants such as Clorox Clean-up are also useful.
The most hygienic of all materials is glass or marble, but few serious cooks would use these exclusively.
"They are hellacious on knives," Keith says. "They dull your knives so much faster."
Sharpening knives too often shortens their life span. And protecting the knife's edge is one of the purposes of cutting boards.
The other is protecting the surface underneath, says Burt Wolf, TV food and travel journalist. Wolf uses his wooden and plastic boards interchangeably, snubbing advice from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to designate one board for raw meat only.
Ah, but he does have pliable, color-coded plastic cutting sheets that he lays over the wood and plastic when he's working with raw meat. Saran's disposable cutting sheets offer the same protection.
"I do think it's a bad idea to have chicken blood on your tomatoes," he says. Yes, that does sound unsavory.
All this worry about bacteria is not unfounded, Keith says. We don't clean as thoroughly as our grandmothers and we use microwave ovens that don't kill bacteria during cooking as well as ovens and stoves.
Plus, our demands for asparagus in September and grapes in January require that produce be imported, usually from South America. The longer the produce is in transit, the more time bacteria have to collect on it.
And then get transferred to our cutting boards.
"If you think about what has changed from our mother's age to our age, there are an awful lot more cancer survivors, elderly and [people living with] HIV," Keith says.
That population has to be extremely cautious about the conditions in which food is prepared, she says.
Pam Potesta, who with Elise Free, owns the Beans About Cooking kitchen shops in the Tampa Bay area, says rubbing wooden boards with wax or mineral oil once a month will prevent them from cracking.
"The oil is just like moisturizer for the skin," she says.
Potesta has these suggestions for buying cutting boards:
UConsider your counter or storage space. Make sure you have the space to store or display the board. Folks with small kitchens should go with smaller and fewer boards. Big kitchen islands beg for killer hunks of wood like the chefs' favorite John Boos boards that can measure 45 by 75 inches or more.
UIf you want only one board, make sure it can be used on both sides. Use one side for raw meats, the other for everything else. Some brands, such as Joyce Chen's Spot 'N Chop line, are already marked with colored dots to help you remember which side is for what.
UBuy cutting boards that fit the job. Small boards are good for travel or slicing limes, lemons and tomatoes. Glass boards protect countertops from messes and are adequate for making sandwiches, but are not all-purpose boards. Large boards with a groove around the edge to catch juices are best for carving meat and poultry. Granite or marble slabs are for rolling dough or putting under hot plates; avoid cutting on them or risk ruining knives.
UFind a comfortable board. Size, weight and texture are individual tastes. Price is also a factor: Spend as little as $5 on a small plastic board and as much as $190 on a bamboo chopping block.
Flimsy bamboo seems the least likely material for a cutting board, but it has become popular for both them and flooring. Totally Bamboo of Southern California makes a line of cutting boards that's sold at Beans About Cooking and other specialty stores.
The boards are so lovely it's almost a shame to take a knife to them. They are silky-smooth and can easily double as serving pieces. Bamboo is a grass, rather than a wood, and groves regenerate themselves about every 18 months after being cut down. For people worried about the decimation of hardwood forests, bamboo is a good option.
As if we need it, more to think about in the quest for a cutting board.