This site will give you the confidence to choose and use the knives and other nonelectric sharp tools in your kitchen. It’s also a reference site that you can use as you improve your skills and acquire the tools that will make you a better cook!

Cleaning

When you clean your cutting board, it’s recommended that you wash it with dish soap and hot water. But it’s also a good idea to run your boards through the dishwasher, or if you don’t have a dishwasher, to soak your boards in the sink filled with water and a quarter of a cup of bleach. This will remove any stains and bacteria that might be lurking on your board. When you do this, make sure your kitchen is well ventilated.

Poly boards stand up to this kind of cleaning very well. Wooden boards, over time, will not hold up to soaking, bleaching, and visits to the dishwasher. Eventually, they’ll crack and warp. However, wood does have natural bacteria-fighting properties, according to a 1993 study at the University of Wisconsin— Madison. Although these bacteria-fighting properties are not naturally found in polyethylene, bacteria can be destroyed through regular cleaning and bleaching. Also, wood cutting boards do need oiling on occasion, to keep them from becoming dry and brittle. Poly boards need no maintenance.

Why cutting boards matter

Slip sliding away

Cutting by the tongue is different from cutting by the knife.

He who licks knives will soon cut his tongue.

When the ox is at the slaughterhouse everyone comes running with their knives.

Tad Williams

He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.

Henry Glassford Bell

The damning tho’t stuck in my throat and cut me like a knife, that she, whom all my life I’d loved, should be another’s wife.

Knife Skills —

a kitchen guide to using the right knife the right way

Cleaning

Tad Williams

Henry Glassford Bell