Thread: (best and worst) Timbers for cutting boards?

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

I am down in Tassie where most cutting boards are made from Huon pine. Other favoured timbers are celery top pine, sassafras, blackwood, myrtle, cheesewood and whatever else you have on hand.




I think that this recommendation is dangerously wrong. Cut some meat, fish, salami or even cheese on a cutting board and not wash it properly and you are inviting the growth of bacteria. Our cutting boards are washed in hot soapy water after evey use with zero ill effect on the timber.

One of the reasons that Huon is favoured is because of the anti-bacterial properties of its oils.

Graeme

Going back twenty or so years the catering industry, in it's wisdom or more likely OH&S when I think on it, outlawed wood for cutting/chopping boards for commercial use. Plastic was the new norm and there were mandated different colours for different foodstuffs (about four colours I think, but my memory is a bit fuzzy there). Then... some genius worked out that wood had natural anti-bacterial properties and was probably the reason thousands, maybe even millions, of people had not died over thousands of years from contaminated chopping boards.

Normal hygiene is recommended. We wipe down cutting boards (nothing special, camphor laurel mainly as it is a weed up here) and sometimes they are wiped with salt, but they are not usually immersed in water (only if well meaning visitors help with the washing up) and we have killed very few so far. Of course that could be why some of them have not returned......



Regards
Paul

We use plastic boards for meat and they all go into the dishwasher along with roasting pans because they all get a pre wash by the dogs licking them clean first. They are really good at cleaning every skerrick of fat and burnt bits after cooking/cutting up a pork roast!. If we used wooden boards the dogs will gnaw on the wood.

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Graeme

Going back twenty or so years the catering industry, in it's wisdom or more likely OH&S when I think on it, outlawed wood for cutting/chopping boards for commercial use. Plastic was the new norm and there were mandated different colours for different foodstuffs (about four colours I think, but my memory is a bit fuzzy there). Then... some genius worked out that wood had natural anti-bacterial properties and was probably the reason thousands, maybe even millions, of people had not died over thousands of years from contaminated chopping boards. ...

Paul

I am pretty sure that genius was the CSIRO, but I cannot find the primary source.

"... If you want to use a wooden chopping board, look for a fine-grained board made from hard wood. According to tests done by the CSIRO, ''after a short period of time, fewer bacteria have been recovered from these (wooden) boards than from identically treated plastic ones''.

BUT! Treat your wooden board carefully as nicks and grooves will prove a haven for bacteria. Wash your board after it touches any sort of raw meat, even if chopping one sort of raw meat then another as this can lead to cross contamination. Wash and dry the board thoroughly after use. ..."
Is it hygienic to use a wooden chopping board for my meat?

I thought I had the source, but it does not seem active:
http://www.foodscience.csiro.au/fshbull/fshbull9b.htm

Cutting Boards.jpg

I am just not as cavalier as you with raw meat, raw fish or a good juicy roast. Ours are always washed.

Just finished making some Sheoak and 1 Jarrah cutting boards, went a bit out there on the designs