Top 4 Best Cutting Boards for 2022

Cutting boards are one of those things that people buy without giving much thought to it. A good, proper cutting board, though, will let you prepare foods in a safe manner while protecting countertops and allowing knives to stay sharp much longer. Choosing the right board is especially important for those who cook in kitchens with little counter space, as the board itself can act as an extension of the counter.

To help you select the right cutting board, we reviewed and compared 35 different cutting boards in order to create this buyer’s guide and list of the four best models.

Unlike many important purchases, there are really only two considerations when shopping for a quality cutting board: size and material. The right size is, of course, purely a matter of what a person needs in terms of cutting space and the ability to store the cutting board. Below, we’ll break down the various materials available and what their relative pros and cons are. With this information in hand, anyone shopping for a cutting board can pick the one best suited for their specific needs.

• Plastic
• Bamboo
• Wood

Plastic

The least expensive cutting boards are usually made of plastic or some composite material. Compared to wood, they tend to be a lighter weight alternative. One particular benefit of a plastic cutting board that many find to be the deciding factor in buying one is that many plastic cutting boards are dishwasher safe. While this can definitely be a convenience, be aware that not only can you use a dishwasher to clean them, you must use a dishwasher to be sure they are really clean.

As you use a plastic cutting board, the knife makes cuts in the surface of the cutting board. How deep these cuts are depend on the hardness of the particular cutting board, the sharpness of the knife and the force used in cutting. Regardless of these variables, any plastic cutting board eventually develops these cuts. The problem is that these tiny slices in the cutting board provide an area where bacteria can gain a foothold and begin to grow a colony. Once this process starts, even vigorous hand scrubbing is not enough to guarantee that the bacteria are completely removed from the board. Only the heat and high pressure spray found in a dishwasher is enough to really be sure any salmonella or other potential bacteria are killed.

The final advantage of plastic cutting boards is the fact that they require no maintenance. You take it out of storage, you use it, you clean it and store it again until next time. There is no oiling or other maintenance in between. For people who only need a large cutting board every blue moon to make large holiday meals or something similar, a plastic or synthetic cutting board may suffice.

Bamboo

The next material is one that is becoming more common every day: bamboo. Bamboo, like wood, is a natural material. Because of this, it comes from a renewable resource that is biodegradable, so it will not spend the next thousand years in a landfill. Unlike wood, bamboo cutting boards are made from the fastest growing plant on the planet. Bamboo can grow several feet each month. Because of this, a cutting board made of bamboo represents a far shorter growing cycle when compared to traditional wooden cutting board materials. This shorter growing cycle is another plus in the eco friendly column for bamboo products, as the bamboo plant has used far fewer nutrients and other resources to reach maturity.

Bamboo cutting boards will tend to be about half the weight of a comparable wooden cutting board. While still substantial when you are dealing with a large cutting board, this lower weight is often an attractive feature for those who have trouble lifting things.

Compared to plastic cutting boards, bamboo cutting boards have one benefit beyond being a natural material. Becuase bamboo is composed of tiny fibers instead of the more solid structure found in plastic, the cuts made by a knife on a bamboo cutting board are somewhat self healing. In other words, as the knife slices across the surface it leaves the same kind of indentation it would on a plastic board, but many of the bamboo fibers are not actually cut, they are just crushed by the knife. Given a little time, these crushed fibers will recover their natural shape and often completely heal the cut. There are obviously limits to this phenomenon, but the simple fact that bamboo fibers act this way helps eliminate much of the danger represented by bacteria finding hiding places within cuts on a cutting board surface.

Compared to wooden cutting boards, bamboo cutting boards tend to be slightly less expensive and a bit less durable. While a properly maintained bamboo cutting board may last many years, a properly maintained wooden cutting board may last generations. This fact and the fact that bamboo grows so quickly are reflected in the price. A bamboo cutting board will generally cost noticeably less than a wooden cutting board of similar quality.

Wood

The last most commonly used material is wood. Traditionally, walnut and maple are considered the best woods for cutting boards. These woods represent a good compromise between being hard enough to stand up to years of cutting and soft enough not to quickly dull knives used on them. Because maple has a huge growing range that spans much of the US and Canada, most new cutting boards made of wood tend to be maple.

Edge Grain vs. End Grain

For all intents and purposes, wooden cutting boards are identical to bamboo cutting boards; they are just heavier, more expensive and more durable. They require the same sort of maintenance a bamboo cutting board needs, are biodegradable and self heal small cuts. Both wooden and bamboo cutting boards can be further divided into two types, based on what direction the wood is cut for the board.

Imagine a typical wooden plank. It has three planes: the face (the wide part), the edge (the narrow part) and the end (the end, naturally).

Wooden projects that are built to show off the beauty of wood use a face grain orientation. This orientation is not used in cutting boards because the face grain is soft enough that any heavy knife work on it would quickly make it split into an unusable mess.

Some cutting boards use an end grain orientation. The big advantage of using an end grain cutting board is the fact that it will preserve the sharpness of a knife for a long time. The drawback is that end grain is more succeptible to splitting, allowing moisture to more easily seep into the cutting board.

The majority of modern cutting boards use an edge grain orientation. The edge grain orientation allows the cutting board to last as long as possible because it has good durability versus knives and good resistance to the infiltration of the board by moisture.

Whether an end grain or edge grain cutting board is better purely depends on whether the person who buys the board wants the board itself to last longer or would prefer to sacrifice that durability to avoid the need to sharpen knives as frequently.

Other Material Types

There are other materials some people choose to use as cutting surfaces, such as ceramic or marble. These materials are not recommended unless you absolutely care nothing for your knives. A knife can be used on a good wooden cutting board for months without requiring major resharpening, years if the person doing the cutting has a light touch. Just a couple of uses on a ceramic surface will turn a razor sharp chef’s knife into an expensive butter knife. Bottom line: great countertop material makes for a very bad cutting surface.