I’ve only used plastic so far. A friend was moving and she gave me her wooden cutting board. I cut something with it, and some grease got on the cutting board. Now I can’t remove the yellow spot no matter what I do. What can I do to clean it?
I’m guessing it wasn’t (well) oiled. Oiled boards are fairly easy to clean and nothing will soak into them as long as they’re cleaned after using.
Might come off with scraping and oiling, so treat the board again. Otherwise the spot is not going to be harmful in any way and cutting boards get marked over time in any case.
Maybe fighting fire with fire and setting the whole board with olive oil now would help at least hide the spot. Beyond that, only time and use helps in my experience.
Olive oil can go rancid and add off flavor to food. Use mineral oil instead. Some people also go with distilled coconut oil, but I still think mineral oil is the best choice.
Ack! No petroleum products on my cutting boards! I’ve used walnut oil for years, as I was told it’s the only food grade oil that dries, and doesn’t go rancid. I have a lot of cutting boards, wooden utensils, bowls, a few “plates” or “plowls”. And I live in a dry climate, so they get oiled up about once a year. I just did the bowls, and wow do they look great!
Not an expert here, but food-grade mineral oil is safe for cutting surfaces from every source I’ve read. It’s even commonly used as a laxative.
Meanwhile, from what I gather, walnut oil has a comparatively long shelf life, but it does eventually go rancid, leaving an off smell. But it may be that yearly oiling makes that a relatively moot point, with the new covering the old.
Mineral oil is definitely safe, just try not to inhale misted particles in large amounts regularly. Pouring some on your cutting board and rubbing it in should be totally safe.
Huh. So in what context would there be misted mineral oil in the air? Like in a factory or workshop…?
Yup.
Should fade over time with regular oiling and washing
Live with it. Who cares? Many tools develop marks of wear or even a patina. Try appreciate the aesthetic. I love it when my tools have unique weathering.
Add more grease so the whole board is the same color
It’s not recommended to use any fat that can go rancid. Mineral oil is usually the way to go.
“Rancid” is not really a clearly defined term.
As long as you use tung oil, hemp oil, linseed oil or perilla oil, they will harden to a solid finish.
They will become “rancid”, but then polymerize and dry after some weeks to a month. Hemp and linseed oil may need some UV light and airflow, so you’d have to keep it by the window.
Just don’t use olive oil or other cooking oils, they will just go bad.
Mineral oil will not go bad, but it rubs and washes off with time, so needs to be reapplied constantly.
Lots of great comments here but one more awesome thing about wooden cutting boards - you can always sand off a very fine layer to expose new wood if the surface gets too gnarly. Then oil it and use it like usual again.
get you some mineral oil and beeswax. 2/1 ratio. heat them in a saucepan on low heat until combined. pour the mixture into a shallow vessel - empty tuna cans work great. allow the mixture to solidify. use a dry clean cloth to apply the paste to cutting board. let it sit for an hour and then wipe off the excess.
repeat once a month-ish or when the wood starts to lighten.
How to get mineral oil and beeswax out of a saucepan
the mineral oil makes the beeswax into a soft paste. it wipes out of the pot quite easily.
lol, good luck. also please no petroleum products on wooden kitchenware. smh
There is literal food grade mineral oil for this exact purpose along with lubricating food making equipment. It’s basically completely inert and is sometimes even used as a food ingredient. You can straight up drink a jug of the stuff with no health repercussions other than the violent greasy shits you would get from drinking any oil. Just because it’s a petroleum product doesn’t automatically mean its bad for you.
You had me at “violent greasy shits”
mineral oil is sold at the pharmacy as a laxitive. so yeah, violent greasy shits.
it’s also cheaper to buy at the pharmacy than it is to buy at the woodworking shops as a finish. same stuff tho.
Can you cite any research, not sponsored by the petroleum industry, that relates to this opinion? Walnut oil is a food product, is made from walnuts, doesn’t go rancid, and works quite well for maintenance of cutting boards and other wooden kitchen ware.
walnut oil is lovely. it doesn’t penetrate the wood as deeply as the mineral oil + beeswax tho.
Have you any actual data, you know, like a study of depth of penetration of your petroleum based product compared with other wood finishes?
i witnessed its effects on the woods that i’ve applied it to. i’m a woodworker, not a scientist or academic paper reader/writer.
i’m not sure why it’s now MY petroleum product tho, that’s a weird and aggressive way to ask your (i think rhetorical) question.
doing in fact, when it comes down to it MY preferred finish is actually shellac, but it doesn’t perform well in kitchen applications.
i mean, ok. but as an actual woodworker, my knowledge base shows mineral oil to be a standard food grade treatment for wooden kitchen implements.
And as an actual woodworker, what does your knowledge base have to say about walnut oil?
Not the person you asked, but I recently did some finish tests with natural drying oils.
Besides tung oil, linseed oil, hemp oil and perilla oil, the wallnut oil dried the slowest by far (talking weeks of difference) and needs added airflow and UV light to make anything happen (tung oil and perilla oil even dry out in the dark).
Besides, there’s the slight chance of an undried pocket coming into contact with someone who is allergic.
In my opinion, not worth it with those great alternatives.
I might have used “bad” walnut oil, I had only one sample, but it was unprocessed, organic walnut oil, the expensive stuff. Maybe you need to use the refined, cheap oil to get better results for woodworking.
My experience is different. Dries in a day, or less. Shrug. I’ll keep using walnut, works just fine for my kitchen ware. I’ve used tung and linseed oil for furniture.
Are you maybe using some kind of processed oil with dryers?
Because I haven’t been able to get any natural oil to dry faster than maybe a couple of days to a week. That was on pieces of foil sitting in the sunlight with constant airflow.
So inside of a workpiece, I would assume it will even take much longer than that.
You can also get pre-mixed stuff if all that is a hassle.
I got a wooden cutting board and a tube each of oil and some stuff that seals it, those have lasted for 8 years now maybe.
well i’m a woodworker, and as such i relish a good hassle.
Understandable, I also do things the difficult way in my hobbies.
Turn it over
Sprinkle with salt, cut a lemon in half, and scour the board. Leave for a few hours, rinse and wash with dish soap.
Repeat as necessary, and every few weeks.I would just keep it as is. But yeah, sounds like your board wasn’t oiled properly. Rub some mineral oil into it and leave to dry.
Just to clarify, mineral oil will never dry. It’s food-safe, but it will rub off just the same and wash out eventually.
Fire
Throw it out and go back to plastic.
Plastic harbors bacteria. Every cut makes a tiny groove for the wee folks to inhabit. These folks started researching wood v. plastic back in the 90s: https://cms.johnboos.com/assets/wood-vs-plastic-cutting-boards.pdf
Not to mention all the microplastics that shed on your food when the knife cuts into the board.
Plastic goes in the dishwasher. Wood doesn’t. Plastic is cleaner.
Dishwashers aren’t some magical tool. They just wash so you don’t have to.
Well, that and… I put wood boards through the dishwasher all the time. Not end grain blocks, but regular low profile boards.
I was doing that with a wood board about 7 or 8 years ago, eventually a chunk fell off the side. I kept using it. Then, it warped. That’s when it was tossed and I got a plastic one.
I tossed mine and got a new one.
Plastic needs to be bleached for 30 minutes to remove contamination. A dishwasher won’t be enough.
BS
Believe what you want… if you aren’t bleaching your plastic cutting boards, you’re breeding bacteria. Wood has anti microbial properties that leeps this under control. See the link upstream for one of the best studies on the topic.
