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Twelve years ago, I wrote an article comparing plastic and wood cutting boards which may be why one of the most frequent questions that I get is what cutting board do I use in my personal life. For the last six years, I have been using cutting boards made by Epicurean Cutting Surfaces and my wooden cutting boards haven't come out of storage for years. Here's why I like the Epicurean boards.
As a cutting surface, the boards from Epicurean are quite similar to the feel of of a soft maple wood cutting board. My sharp knives slide on the surface of the board without cutting in too far (but the board is soft enough that it doesn't wear down the blade like a bamboo board can). This is because Epicurean boards are made of a wood fiber composite and so feel very much like cutting on traditional wood instead of plastic or bamboo or glass. The boards are just 1/4-in thick which make them a lot less bulky than my thick wooden cutting boards. The thinness of the boards make them easy to dry. After hand washing a wood board, I used to have to set up a place to stand up the board to dry it (it was so thick it wouldn't sit nicely in any drying rack that I could buy). Sometimes, I would stick the wood board into an empty dishwasher (with the door open and the tray pulled out) to dry it. With the Epicurean boards, they are thin enough that I can stand the board up in the grooves/slots in a plastic drying rack on my counter. (The thinness also means that storing my four boards uses the same space as a single wood cutting board does. However, I use these boards so often that they never go into storage, and they just go directly from the drying rack to the counter to the sink and then back into the drying rack.)
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- Do you know if they are harder on knives than normal wood? I have touched som boards in a store, and had the feeling that they are much harder. They also contain a lot of glue, to my understanding, that some say is harsh on the edge of the knife.
- Have your tried the black ones? They have another composition, I think.
- It seems, a big brand is TopChef, making optical identical boards, somewhat cheaper. Have your tried them?
- Do you know if they have the same anti-bacterial properties as wood? This is the main reason I use wood for chicken and meat.
I don't know if they are harder on knives than normal wood. They do not seem to be. I have not found that I have needed to sharpen my knives any more often than when I was using regular wood. (So, if they are harder, then it is by a negligible amount.)
I own both black and natural (two boards of each). They might have different composition, but I have not noticed a significant difference between the boards. I really can't say if one is softer than the other from my experience.
I have not had an opportunity to try similar boards from TopChef.
I do not know for sure, but they do seem to clean easily and once dry do not appear to harbor any bacteria. They do have the added benefit that you can run them in a dishwasher which will usually be sufficient to sanitize the board if there is any doubt. I am a stickler for food safety in my house and have used my boards (except the small one) on meat and poultry for years now without incident. I don't know if this is useful information or not to you, but these boards are NSF certified.