Choosing a chopping board


Choosing a chopping board
It's a no-brainer, surely? If you want a chopping board, just find a piece of wood, and Bob's your uncle! You can happily chop away with a knife and not damage the table or worktop. But in reality, it's a bit more complicated than that. You need to be careful what you are buying, in particular the material that the board is made from.
49 K 4.6/5 (20 reviews)
Grade this page:
Keywords for this post:UtensilChoiceCutting materialKnife
Last modified on: May 8th 2012
For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend
Choosing a chopping board

Glass or metal:

glass cutting board



You will sometimes see chopping boards made from these materials, generally decorated with an embedded photo or graphic design. It's very simple: just don't buy them! Both materials will blunt your knife very rapidly.

A chopping board should be made of reasonably soft material.

Wood

wood cutting board


Hmm... It's tempting to go back to natural materials with an old-fashioned chopping board, like those that have been used since medieval times.

chopping board middle age



This is an appealing idea, but wooden chopping boards have two problems: the knife cuts into the wood easily, so you end up with a certain amount of “sawdust” in the food you are cutting, and wood is porous, so it can hold smells or flavours, even if it is cleaned very thoroughly (this is pretty disastrous if you cut garlic on it, then follow that with pastry for a dessert, for example – just imagine the mix of flavours…).

A chopping board should be resistant to knife cuts.


Synthetic material

PEHD cutting board


This is without doubt the ideal solution: flexible enough to protect the knife edge, robust enough not to be damaged too quickly. It is easy to clean and does not tend to hold flavours or smells.

The synthetic materials fall into two main groups: high-density polyethylene or HDPE, and polyvinyl chloride or PVC. HDPE is more expensive than PVC, but much more resilient and more neutral, so better for our health.

Most of the cheaper chopping boards on sale in the shops are in PVC and these present much the same problem as wooden ones: they are easily damaged by the knife, so you will soon end up with bits of PVC in your food. It is better to be careful and replace any PVC board which shows too many knife marks.

PVC chopping board



When it comes to the size, it's quite simple: the bigger the better (as long you can find a place to store it in your kitchen, of course). A board about 30 x 30 cm (12 x 12 inches) and 1 cm (½ inch thick) is a good compromise. A large board is comfortable to use as you can cut things easily and push them to the side as you go. This is more awkward with a small board.

If you buy a board in HDPE from a professional cookware shop (expensive, but the quality will be good), you will have a choice of both size and colour, as restaurant kitchens use different boards for meat, vegetables, fish, etc. and these are colour coded (red = meat, green = vegetables, etc.).

PEHD chopping board



To sum up: For your own kitchen, invest in a board in HDPE about 20 x 30 cm (8 x 12 inches).



Lasts posts
The importance of sieving
The importance of sieving
In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3rd 2025747
The grease spray
The grease spray
As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...
August 26th 20254,3065
Cake moulds
Cake moulds
When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25th 20254,6215
Thinning out herbs
Thinning out herbs
If you need to add a long-stemmed herb (tarragon, mint, verbena, thyme, etc.) to a recipe, you'll probably only need the leaves and not the stem, so you'll need to remove the leaves. Leaf removal means keeping only the beautiful leaves, and eliminating the ugly stems and leaves, but how do you do...
August 8th 20252,8295
Add a bay leaf
Add a bay leaf
Bay leaf: small in size, but big in flavor. You'll find it in hundreds of recipes, and it's often added to cooking meat, in a sauce or broth, usually accompanied by other herbs or products. It's a staple of Provençal, Mediterranean and Oriental cuisine, but not the only one. Usually, in a...
July 31th 20252,9475

Other pages you may also like
The grease spray
The grease spray
As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...
August 26th 20254,3065
The window-pane test in bread-making
The window-pane test in bread-making
The home bread-makers often ask themselves “Have I kneaded my dough long enough?” . A good question, as dough that is insufficiently kneaded will not rise properly or will fall flat when the top is slashed, which is very frustrating. To know when the dough is ready, one can rely on the length...
June 16th 202194 K 23.9
Steam for baking bread
Steam for baking bread
What does steam have to do with bread-making? This is not only a bakers' secret, it is something you might not think of at all: if you make bread and bake it like a cake, you will end up with bread, but pale and with a thick, hard crust – a long way from the golden-brown crusty loaf you had in...
June 16th 2021144 K4.5
The 3 secrets of Parisian flan
The 3 secrets of Parisian flan
A flan Parisien, or boulanger, is a simple yet delicious cake. A cream, a mixture of milk, eggs and sugar, is poured into a raw pastry base and baked in the oven until the pastry and cream are cooked. This is the simplest version of the recipe, probably the original one, but nowadays the cream...
July 21th 202313 K4.7
A few tips for effective kneading at home
A few tips for effective kneading at home
When you have to knead dough for bread or some other recipe, you may well use a food processor or the type of machine known as a stand mixer. The best-known brands are Kenwood and KitchenAid. They are useful tools, but here are a few tips to help you get the best out of them.
June 23th 2021280 K 23.7
Post a comment or question
Posted by:
I am not a leaving thing

Follow this page
If you are interested in this page, you can "follow" it, by entering your email address here. You will then receive a notification immediately each time the page is modified or a new comment is added. Please note that you will need to confirm this following.
I am not a leaving thing
Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.
Alternatively: you can subscribe to the mailing list of cooling-ez.com , you will receive a e-mail for each new recipe published on the site.

Back to top of page