Best Cutting Boards

[tekobo]

Hi there.  I am about to dive down a new rabbit hole and I thought I would drop by and see if you could help me dig deeper.

A number of top UK chefs recommend the Apex cutting boards.  They are eye wateringly expensive if you search generally on the web but I managed to track down the UK source and managed to get it down to a manageable £165: https://rowandsons.co.uk/collections/chefs-at-home/products/apex-cutting-board

I then did some more searching to confirm or change my choice and found this YouTube video in which asahi and hasegawa cutting boards are recommended.  They are more reasonably priced and the Black Friday sales would be a good option for renewing our very old stack of cutting boards.  We would keep the good wooden ones for serving and chopping but a fresh set for fish, meat and veg prep would be great.  

Grateful for your views and recommendations before I pull the trigger.  

 

[5698k]

I use Hi Soft, very similar to asahi, and i love them. I’m a bit of a knife snob, all my knives are carbon steel, with very fine, sharp edges. I sharpen at roughly 12* per side. My point is that even with these edges, these boards are great because they dont affect my edges at all. I can easily go a year between sharpenings, and even then, the edges are never damaged because of cutting surface. They’re also very sanitary, they dont gouge like other synthetics, which is where bacteria grow. They’re also very can be bleached or sanded, should the need ever arise.


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[C6Bill]

I have a couple but nothing extravagant, typically I just grab my OXO when chopping veggies or my Boos block for meat. I go to a restaurant if i want fish, i just don't cook it at home. So long story short, i can't help you lol

[Syzygies]

HASEGAWA PRO-SOFT RUBBER WOOD CORE CUTTING BOARD FSR 19.7" X 13.8" X 0.8" HT

Traveling solo in Japan, I'd often sit at bars where I could watch chefs work. I learn, and I have always taught my math students to learn, by absorbing the mindsets of others I admire. Cooking isn't following lists of ingredients.

This is the class of board I always saw at the stations that relied on knife technique. I now have several sizes, duplicated when I had two kitchens. I consider these the canonical answer to your question, with the same certainty as "the JVR Vac-100 is far and away the best entry level chamber vacuum machine" (again I bought one for each kitchen, in each case replacing a far clunkier VacMaster).

They do stain. One can ignore this, or soak with a mixture of bleach and water.

My "Made in Japan" hall of fame also includes items one would expect to buy from China: the best cleaver and best wok I've ever owned, again duplicated while I had two kitchens. We saw the New York wok last night in constant use yesterday at California friends' Thanksgiving, for various veggie sides.

They ship worldwide:

Tojiro DP 3-Layer Chinese Cleaver 225mm (thin blade)

Yamada Hammered Iron Round Bottom Wok (1.6mm Thickness)
Yamada Hammered Iron Flat Bottom Wok (1.6mm Thickness)

Edited Friday at 06:04 PM by Syzygies

[tekobo]

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.  

Edited 7 hours ago by tekobo

[jonj]

So sorry for your loss.