[Sca-cooks] Cleaning plastic and wooden cutting boards

Kathleen Madsen kmadsen12000 at yahoo.com
Fri Mar 21 06:18:12 PDT 2008


I've always used a bleach/water solution or the
commercial sanitizer tablets on my cutting boards. 
You just have to be sure to leave them in the solution
for the correct amount of time for the product to
work.  The tablets I used were 2 minutes, for example.

You also want to let them air dry, as towels can
harbor bacteria and can re-introduce all the germs
that you just got rid of.

If you run them through the dishwasher it's the high
temperature that kills off the bacteria.  Frequently
home dishwashers don't get hot enough for long enough
to actually sanitize whatever is being cleaned.

As for reconditioning the wood boards I use olive oil.
 You can get food grade mineral oil at kitchen supply
stores but I've *always* got olive oil in the house
and it works just as good as the mineral oil.  I give
my boards a good soap scrub periodically to renew the
oil so it doesn't go rancid on me.  It's worked
remarkably well for my boards, which see heavy use,
for several years.

I tend to raw cut meat on my plastic board but only
because it has a trough along the outside edge to
catch the juices.  I will cut cooked meat on my wood
boards.

Eibhlin


> 
> Out of Period but still applicable:
> As a relataively experienced cook but a newbie SCA
> person, I am not
> the greatest on care of my equipment.  I have some
> plastic cutting boards
> that over time had become stained and I soaked them
> in bleach/water/white
> vinegar in the sink, then I am running them through
> the dishwasher.   Is this
> going to be enough to sterilize them so I can keep
> using them, or should I
> just replace them?  Keep in mind that I am cheap and
> broke right now.
> Also, what should I do to refurbish my fairly dried
> out wooden cutting boards, 
> and what do you allrecommend that you use plastic
> vs. wooden cutting
> boards for?  I had always heard to use the plastic
> for meat because it could
> be cleaned easier.
> 
> Christianna in Texas (where the storms were bad but
> not nearly
> as bad as in Atlanta)
> 




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