Choosing a board – what options?

There are a number of materials to choose from when deciding on a chopping board, and these are the most popular choices.

• Plastic. There is an argument that plastic is more sanitary than wood but the softer surface of plastic boards is easily cut by knives, and the resulting grooves and cuts in the surface tend to harbor germs even after being well cleaned with harsh chemicals such as bleach and other disinfectants. On the whole, plastic is not a good choice unless the board is aggressively cleaned after every use.
• Wood. There are many different types of wood that can be used for a chopping board and some are more appropriate than others. Generally wood is self healing and small cuts will heal on their own, but still, some woods are better. On the whole, hard woods make better chopping boards, but some hard woods such as Red Oak have large pores that are conducive to collecting bacteria and should not be used. Butcher block  woods are excellent and make superb cutting boards and these can be made of almost any woods from bamboo to Maple wood.
• Glass. Glass boards are easy to clean but are very abrasive to sharp knife edges. Glas – even tempered glass can break if too much pressure is applied and generally make good decorative boards rather than every day use type boards.
• Steel. Steel has similar issues that glass does. yes, it is easy to clean, but s very hard on knives and will dull them very quickly.
• Marble. Once again, marble is for decorative purposes rather than functionality. The surface is too hard and brittle to be of any real use as a chopping board.

To summarize – wood is the ideal material, preferably hard wood butcher block or solid tight grained wood such as Maple.