Best Cutting Board

The major factors to consider when buying a kitchen cutting board are your stomach, your fingers and your knives. You want a board that you can keep free of bacteria, that won't slip dangerously around the counter as you try to slice food, and that won't destroy your knives.

Experts disagree on whether wood or plastic cutting boards are the most sanitary. Most governmental agencies in the United States recommend plastic, while other experts say scarred, rutted plastic cutting boards can harbor just as much bacteria as wood. In either case, cutting boards need to be cleaned and maintained, and care must be exercised to avoid cross-contamination. For example, you'll need to disinfect a cutting board between chopping raw meat and cutting vegetables for a salad, or have separate cutting boards each task.

Other cutting-board materials include bamboo, composite, plastic and glass. Bamboo cutting boards offer many of the advantages of wood but are more eco-friendly since bamboo is an easily renewable natural resource. Composite or plastic cutting boards are dishwasher-safe, unlike wood and bamboo. Wood, bamboo and plastic are better for your knives than composite boards, and harder boards like glass, metal, stone and ceramic will quickly destroy knives, experts say. Eventually, even the best wood, bamboo, plastic and composite cutting boards will develop too many gouges and should be retired. Consider that when weighing costs. Also, look for a cutting board that is either heavy enough or has counter-hugging qualities so the board will stay reasonably still as you work on it.