Spoonman Cutting Boards
Long Grain Boards vs. End Grain Boards
There are two basic types of wood cutting boards: long grain boards (sometimes called flat grain or edge grain boards) and end grain boards.
What's the difference?
Any piece of wood has three basic surfaces: the face grain, the edge grain, and the end grain. If you picture a typical board, the large flat sides are the face grain, the long thin sides are the edge grain, and the two small ends of the board are the end grain. Long grain boards are made by simply gluing strips of wood together, and can be either face grain, edge grain, or a combination of the two. End grain boards (sometimes called butcher blocks) are made by taking a long grain board and cutting it across the joints, and then flipping these strips of blocks on their side so the end grain is up and then gluing them back together.
What are the pros and cons of each?
Long grain boards are easier to manufacture, as they require less production steps, and are therefore more affordable. Because the grain is not up, long grain boards are more resistant to absorbing moisture and staining. End grain boards are more time-consuming to produce, but many cooks prefer them over long grain boards for a few reasons. First, they are kinder to a knife's edge since your knife's blade is sliding between the ends of the wood fibers, rather than crushing against their sides, as it would on a long grain board. Secondly, end grain is harder than long grain, and therefore faster under your knife (doesn't "grab" as much) - although a long grain board is still much faster than a plastic board. And finally, end grain boards are more durable and don't show knife marks nearly as much, since the knife blade slides between the ends of the fibers rather than cutting across their length and breaking them down over time. Since end grain boards absorb moisture more readily than long grain boards, they can be more susceptible to staining, and also to warping and/or splitting if they are not cared for properly. Once a month application of mineral oil seals, protects and stabilizes both long grain and end grain cutting boards in all but the most extreme circumstances.
In any case, both long grain and end grain cutting boards are beautiful, functional, and durable and I will be happy to provide you with whichever you prefer.
Food Safety: Plastic vs. Wood
Studies have shown that plastic boards are not necessarily "safer" and more bacteria-resistant than wood cutting boards, and are likely LESS safe than wood. Since plastic is dishwasher-safe, it might seem like the best option, but if you have a plastic cutting board that is large enough to be a comfortable workspace for a standard size chef's knife, it may not even fit in the dishwasher. And after a short time, the plastic gets chewed up, especially if your knives are sharp, which they should be for the safest cutting experience. (Sharper knife edge = less force and more control.) The cracks and crevices and plastic fuzz of a used plastic board become great hiding places for bacteria, and are impossible to clean manually. Some people have (understandable!) concerns about using wood cutting boards for raw meat. However, research has shown that wood is almost certainly the safest.
Dean O. Cliver, PhD, a professor at the Food Research Institute for 30 years, and more recently professor emeritus of food safety at the University of California, Davis, has been studying the issue of plastic vs. wood cutting boards since the early 90s. In a 1993 study at the Food Reseach Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he and a group of students cultivated Salmonella and E. Coli bacteria on new and used plastic and wood cutting boards and then cleaned them manually (with hot soapy water and a dish rag). Cliver and colleagues found that wooden cutting boards seemed to pull the bacteria down beneath the surface of the cutting board, where they didn’t multiply and eventually died off. Even older wooden cutting boards with deep grooves had low levels of recoverable bacteria, similar to what was found in new boards. “It’s been suggested that bacteria being slurped down in wood could reappear if you scored the wood with a knife,” says Cliver. But his research has found that the bacteria never reappear on the surface, even after it’s been sliced with a sharp blade.
He said, "We soon found that disease bacteria such as these [Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella] were not recoverable from wooden surfaces in a short time after they were applied, unless very large numbers were used. New plastic surfaces allowed the bacteria to persist, but were easily cleaned and disinfected. However, wooden boards that had been used and had many knife cuts acted almost the same as new wood, whereas plastic surfaces that were knife-scarred were impossible to clean and disinfect manually, especially when food residues such as chicken fat were present. Scanning electron micrographs revealed highly significant damage to plastic surfaces from knife cuts."
While the wooden boards appear to kill bacteria, "We've not recovered the little critters' dead bodies," Cliver acknowledges. "So all we know is that by the best available means, we can't get them back after they go onto a board." The big concern is whether bacteria hiding deep within the wood might subsequently surface to contaminate the foods on the chopping block. "As best we can tell, that isn't going to happen," Cliver says.The same is not true of knife-scored plastic cutting boards. The scientists found that bacteria lodged in the plastic's cut grooves not only survived a hot water-and-soap wash, but could later surface to contaminate foods. By contrast, Cliver says, with wood "a good wipe will do fine – and if you forget to wipe the board, you probably won't be too bad off." At one point, the Wisconsin researchers inoculated wood and plastic on three successive days, maintaining each board - without cleaning – at room temperatures and high humidity. By the end of the three days, "The plastic boards were downright disgusting," Cliver says, "while the wood boards had about 99.9 percent fewer bacteria than we had put on them. This flies in the face of the prevailing wisdom. It isn't what I expected. Our original objectives were to
learn about bacterial contamination of wood cutting boards and to
find a way to decontaminate the wood so it would be almost as safe
as plastic. That's not what happened." The scientists found that three minutes after contaminating a board that 99.9 percent of the bacteria on wooden boards had died, while none of the bacteria died on plastic. Bacterial numbers actually increased on plastic cutting boards held overnight at room temperature, but the scientists could not recover any bacteria from wooden boards treated the same way. Cliver is quick to point out that cooks should continue to be
careful when they handle foods and wash off cutting surfaces after
they cut meat or chicken that may be contaminated with bacteria.
"Wood may be preferable in that small lapses in sanitary
practices are not as dangerous on wood as on plastic," he says.
"This doesn't mean you can be sloppy about safety. It means you
can use a wood cutting board, if that is the kind you prefer. It
certainly isn't less safe than plastic and appears to be more
safe." Cliver noted that many wood cutting boards that are commercially available have been treated with mineral oil to make them more moisture resistant, however he found that "mineral oil treatment of the wood surface had little effect on the microbiological findings." He did not test glass cutting boards, as they very quickly render knives so dull as to be dangerous, since glass is naturally harder than steel. (If you cut on a glass cutting board and look closely, you can sometimes see thin dark lines that are actually steel that has come off of your knife blade. Often, glass cutting boards will actually roll a knife's edge over to one side or the other.)
Their entire study can be read here, and shorter summaries of their study can be read here and here. More about Dean Cliver's life and work can be read here.
If you'd rather not cut fruits and vegetables on the same wood surface on which you've cut raw meat, you can choose to keep your cutting board reversible (and use grip liner instead of rubber feet). This will allow you to have one side that is only for cutting meat - and in this case a juice groove would be recommended since it contains the raw meat juice and makes it immediately obvious which side you're using. If you'd like to keep both sides of your wood board free from any potential cross contamination, you can always buy plastic boards for raw meat, sanitize them in the dishwasher after every use, and replace them when the surface starts to get beat up.