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Lost him yesterday, cancer sucks 🤬

Olivewood End Grain Carving Board (Arte Legno, Italy) I do love a good end grain cutting board. Shown is my favorite; I used a UK source. The end grain testimonials here happened to coincide with my pulling out this board to bone some chicken thighs that I had cooked sous vide in a Chettinad pepper masala, best chicken curry of my life. My smaller "utility" Hasegawa board is shown for comparison. For any detailed knife work such as mincing, I always reach for one of my Hasegawa boards. I have a great capacity for creative delusion, balanced by high entropy, so I find what I do after I stop thinking to be informative. On the other hand, food is part romance. For anyone who hasn't admired the attentive composure of Japanese chefs working in front of you on a Hasegawa class board, the end grain wood is more romantic. And it rarely makes sense to have one type of tool, though my cast iron, carbon steel, enameled cast iron, and various clay pots are all talking behind my back as I go all in on Hestan NanoBond pans for utility use. Many reviews haven't made the effort to learn best use of this molecular titanium surface, yielding a metal pan that thinks it's ceramic nonstick. If with careful technique I can glide a fried egg across its surface like an air hockey table, and I don't want teflon nonstick pans for health reasons, then any other pan becomes a speciality player. I've had other kinds of laminated boards chip on me; my knives are sharper than they imagined. I don't see a health hazard with my Hasegawa boards. And I bought their sanding block, tried it once, and haven't thought about it since. I will simply buy these boards again when the time comes; they are that important to me.

all this cutting board talk reminded me to sharpen my knives....

@tekobo i don't know if asahi offers a sponge sanding block, but hasegawa has one to smooth out the board after heavy use. but i've never been able to smooth out the surface other than raising up even more plastic "fur" on top. but again, microplastics don't bother me. i'm asian and immune to it from years of eating hot foods out of plastic bags. and because i'm unable to smooth the board out, i am leaning towards wood (endgrain) for my next board. and if it dulls my knives a little faster, so be it. i rather enjoy sharpening anyway.. if i have to buy another synthetic, it would be the the black asahi for plebs, not the pro kind..

We spent the weekend at @RokDok's cutting up a rare breed pig. We got half and I spent an hour this morning cutting some up for mincing to make pies. Just look at that marbling! And just look at that space. It was a joy, cutting this up on my new Asahi board. I think this light coloured one will become my raw meat board. I'll be able to see any marks and stains and can keep it extra clean by sanding it down once in a while. Introducing these boards simply replaces the plastic and Epicurean boards that we used to use for food prep. I still have a wooden board for chopping and a range of wooden boards for serving. I hear you, @David Chang, regarding micro plastics but I don't plan to use a serrated knife on this and will be intentional about using a different board if I need to do any heavy chopping. It actually makes me wonder about how much chopping one actually needs to do when you are not butchering an animal and needing to chop through bone. I do the rocking action for cutting things small and chopping, on any surface, must incorporate little bits of the material that you are chopping on. I am enjoying this journey so far. The black boards are due to arrive from Japan next week. All of the boards that I bought are 20mm thick. My husband usually does the procuring of stuff around here and I think he felt a bit left out. He has bought a thinner Asahi board to cut up to make small boards for quick jobs. Lots to look forward to in the lead up to Christmas.

Hey @C6Bill. It's tough when we lose our best friends. I hope you had lots of good cuddles.

Its a setup !!! I'm being framed 👹

There’s no doubt that end grain boards can be extremely beautiful, and definitely have a place in the kitchen and beyond, i have just found that for the vast majority of my kitchen prep, the Hi-Soft, Asahi, Hasegawa boards are my go to. They’re light enough to maneuver, but heavy enough to stay in place. Their surface can be repaired from every day use, keeping them sanitary. They have a soft feel under the blade, reducing fatigue when doing a lot of chopping, and as i said before, are the best I’ve found at preserving your edges. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

@DennisLinkletter Does this include accessories? Have the prices been adjusted on the site or is the discount applied at checkout?

Prisons are full of not guilty people and the first one's to say so. Just sayin.

I love my end-grain cutting board!

Hello Tekebo, I always show up to the race late, maybe because I like to give others a head start. Here though I'm inclined to think there probably right, all cutting boards were not created equally, that's evident of the condition of your knife after some use on various boards. Personally I like an end grain board because they wear slowly, they are durable, they have enhanced knife preservation, self healing properties and lastly...they are as handsome as hell. You know I use to make cutting boards, gave em out for Xmas and gifts although they weren't end grain....preparation in sanding was an issue while exposed long grain was easier to fashion. Never did think much on damage to my knives, every few months I'd just sharpen the lot. I would still have to say though, I prefer a board that turns heads just like a pretty girl. A wooden board will always have my heart and be on my table, it's naturally attractive.

Sorry about Sinbad 🥲 I’m on the verge of losing Cooper 🫣

Not guilty, I only ban the ones that are a first post and contains links to a hair loss remedy, weight loss treatments or ED medications lol

Thanks for your help. I was a little confused as to why!

Geez Seaport, you got sucked up into the vacum. The culprit often tagged the logo and there you go...you may have been an inadvertent target. So sorry, I'll have Toney and C6Bill say 5 Our Fathers, and 10 Hail Mary's. Next time the ruler. Happy posting

I really think you’re gonna like those.. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Let the fun begin!

I saw an ad for a titanium cutting board. I agree with them that it's probably very sanitary but I don't relish the thought of needing to sharpen my knives after every use

Hasegawa FSR (wood core) + Very soft cushy cutting surface Keeps blade sharp much longer - Expensive. Discolours easily especially chopping parsley. Not for hacking or bone chopping. Microplastics galore! Gouges and cut marks cannot be removed with their branded sandpaper block. Asahi Black Rubber Board (home use line with hole punched on the corner) + Thin, lightweight. Comes in handy small sizes. Soft, cushy surface. Not as soft as Hasegawa FSR. Cheaper than FSR but you get less board. Keeps blade sharp longer No discolouration (it's black) - Expensive. Appears to shed less plastic. Gouges and cut marks cannot be sanded. At the end, you still need a heavy wood block board for chopping bones and such. If you don't mind microplastics, either one is fine. Asahi thin board is my favourite for quick small jobs. Serrated knives will destroy these plastic boards but i use bread knives on them anyway...

We've been getting a lot of SPAM messages lately. You might have just been caught up in scrubbing those bogus accounts. Sorry.

The Hasegawa and Asahi cutting boards will have cutting surfaces superior to any other I have used. Both for protecting the knives and actually cutting food more effectively. Bamboo is hard on cutting edges; it's penalty work for my woodworking neighbor. Various synthetic boards chip on me; they aren't expecting my sharp knives. And a company that flogs pure titanium pans on Facebook also sells titanium cutting boards, which tipped me off that they have no idea what they're doing. Sure, titanium is softer than steel, but that's far from the whole picture. I'm loving my Hestan Titanium Chef's Pan which is actually a molecular titanium surface deposited on steel that is 4x stronger than steel, and slick, leaning in the "ceramic nonstick" direction but more durable. But pure titanium is a terrible idea for a pan. Luckily, my knowledge of cutting boards saved me from a mistake. The Japanese, of course, are expecting sharp knives. I have long had a raw butcher block work surface in each kitchen, with an overhang to mount tools. I wash the surface by scraping with a bench knife into an (empty) steam table insert that also collects compost as I work. Since getting Japanese cutting boards, I only use the bare wood some of the time, like for prepping winter squash. I am delinquent in bleaching my Japanese boards again, which does work. I lay down paper towels on the board surface in a utility sink, pour over a bleach mixture just strong enough to turn the paper towels back to pulp. But I'm not expecting Michelin inspectors any time soon (their loss!) and the stains don't bother me. Still, black? Clever. 600cm, wow. Cutting the Hasagawa boards (which you don't plan to do) would expose the wood core. Artists know this one: Cut both ends, make it look deliberate. 😀

So sorry for your loss.

Hi all, I don’t post often. However enjoy following other members posts. A couple of weeks ago I was Banned for no apparent reason that I was aware of. I reached out to Dennis explaining the situation, everything was restored immediately. Again a thank you to Dennis for his quick response. Regards Seasport

Thanks @5698k. I remembered your obsession with knives and was hoping to get a response from you. I am particularly taken with you saying that you are able to hold an edge on your knives for up to a year as a result of using better boards. Thanks for this input re the Hasegawa board @Syzygies. It looks like it is lighter than the others as well. Before I started this post about boards I searched the site to see what else had been said on the topic and found a post from you that I would summarise as "go big or go home" i.e. get the biggest cutting surface that you can to help you work efficiently. As for you @C6Bill? Your input helped me remember that there are perfectly acceptable, cheaper ways to tackle this problem. That said, I was already half way down the rabbit hole when I posted and your message didn't succeed in hauling me out. I have ended up ordering one plain Asahi board at 600cm x 33cm x 2cm, two black Asahi boards at 600cm x 30cm x 2cm and one composite Hasegawa board at 600cm x 30cm x 2cm. We will try them out and see what we think. I see us reserving the Hasegawa board for sushi and fish filleting. I particularly liked the advertised heat resistance of the Asahi boards. The Apex boards I was previously looking at should only be washed at relatively low temperatures and have to be stored flat to avoid warping - not a great idea when enthusiastic friends or house guests might get hold of them and "help" without realising the damage they might do. There is a chance that we might cut at least one of the black Asahi boards down to get more manageable sizes for quick use. That might be unnecessary and we might end up buying a few small, cheap boards for things like cutting lemons for drinks or other quick tasks. Plan is to ditch our very old and scratched Epicurean boards and to select which of our wooden boards to keep. The only remaining wrinkle is making sure we have enough boards with a channel that allow juice from resting meat to gather. That'll be likely in the wooden board category. Thanks for all your help. I will report back when we have had a chance to try them all out. P.S. I just looked at my avatar and realised it is of Sinbad, our beloved cat, who died just a couple of weeks ago. He had the best death of any of our cats to date. Having just celebrated his 14th birthday he was still running around like a kitten until one day, he just went out to do his usual patrol of the garden and my husband later found him dead on the ground. The vet thinks he had some kind of a heart attack. Rest in peace S. He will stay here as my avatar.