One piece of equipment essential to any kitchen is decent chopping board. I have several but I have the one big reliable one gifted to me twenty years ago from a local kitchen shop for something promotional I did for them. It is still as good as the day I got it and well made boards should last a lifetime. The other ones I used out on professional jobs or again were just given to me as samples from companies. The big question these days though is the debate about whether plastic or any other material is better and safer?
The simple answer is a straight no. The food safety and hygiene worlds would have us believe we must not use wood but in actual fact it is the safest material and we have been chopping on it for thousands of years. It may be organic but its better at dealing with bacteria once it’s cleaned properly with a drizzle of boiling water to sterilize it without the use of chemicals especially after working with raw meat, fish or vegetables. It then needs time to air dry as well. Of course when it is badly cracked then it should not be used but a quality one will stay intact when treated right.
The issue with plastic is the chipping away at the surface leading to fine fragments of micro plastic getting into you food so would you rather consume some organic wood particles of dust or bits of artificial plastic? The main reason the professional kitchen is steered away from wood is what is known as colour coding meaning plastic boards are coloured according to their use.
We use for example red for raw meat and blue for raw fish to avoid cross contamination. A kitchen can have half a dozen different coloured boards and this food safety precaution is less easy with wood but it can be done in a disciplined kitchen whereby each section washes its own boards. With the added worry now of allergic contamination in food, a separate board has to be used for this preparation too.
Indeed it has gone as far as separate sections or whole other kitchens for complete food allergy compliance. In some kitchens now the plastic boards also have to be replaced every year as they get so damaged. It seems contradictory that we should be using the different plastic boards to avoid any cross contamination of foods for guests yet at the same time we are feeding the customers bits of plastic as an extra ingredient in their meal.
The answer has to be to use wooden boards at home and in workplaces but the risk is that the skill and knowledge level is not in modern professional kitchens in order to not get them mixed up. If they were all cleaned properly after every use of course there would be less risk. There is also a general safety risk with plastic boards slipping on stainless worktops and causing injury from knives.
I have to regularly correct chefs to place a tea towel or dampened kitchen paper underneath a plastic board. You will not find a big, heavy wooden board slipping very much and some have corner grips now as well. When I was training in the eighties my first kitchen had a big butchers block for boning out and cutting all the meat on and after every service it got cleaned down, scrubbed with a wire brush and rubbed with salt to kill off any residual bacteria.
Ok you can get jumbo sized plastic boards for working with large joints of meat but it’s just not the same as a sturdy four legged wooden table that is not going to move an inch no matter what is thrown at it. Food safety laws are there to protect us but now common sense should prevail as the science on micro plastics in our bodies is indisputable at this stage.
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