Chef Martin’s Tip 3

Cutting boards!

Good cutting boards are an essential part to any good kitchen.

One: the built in cutting boards that cannot be removed and cleaned in the dishwasher once in while are no good, just use them as decorative pieces.

Two: all cutting surfaces should be soft enough for your knives to sink in a little. White fiberglass is great, wood is still good to use, and the plastic thin ones that bend, are also ok.

Three: any serious cook should have a minimum of 2-4 cutting boards, preferably in different areas of your kitchen. Colors are great, so you can have red for meat, green for vegetables and blue or white for fish and seafood.

Four: bleach your board once in a week with a solution of water and bleach 50/50. A white colored board is easier to keep clean as you can see stain happening with time.

Five: cross contamination is very common in households, and often the cause of a short visit to the emergency hospital in the middle of the night. I will spare you the detailed side effects, but let’s just say it’s ugly and will motivate you to wash your board the next time around.
To avoid these type of issues, if you start by working raw poultry, beef, pork, fish or seafood on your board. Make sure that you clean it extremely well with a bleach solution before using it again for your vegetables or anything else. See this link for more info

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.