Preparing food can be quite the time-consuming task, and doing it right often involves a plethora of kitchen utensils for chopping, crushing, and cooking your meals. But after you’ve whipped up your culinary masterpiece, the daunting task of cleaning all that equipment awaits.
Every kitchen is equipped with chopping boards, essential for providing a stable and flat surface to prep your veggies, meats, fish, or whatever else requires slicing and dicing. They’re also crucial in preventing cross-contamination, with professional kitchens typically using colour-coded boards for different ingredients.
Chopping boards come in various materials like wood, plastic, glass, steel, or marble. However, BBC Good Food has highlighted that wooden boards may harbour ‘hidden nasties’.
The team cautioned that these boards could become a breeding ground for bacteria. To combat any lurking germs, Good Food recommends a natural cleaning method that only requires two common kitchen items, ensuring your wooden chopping board remains germ-free. You just need a lemon and some salt, reports the Daily Record.
On their Instagram, they advised: “Did you know that your wooden chopping boards can store all kinds of hidden nasties? Clean them regularly with our harsh chemical-free hack, using budget-friendly lemons and salt it takes just five minutes and keeps bad bacteria at bay!”
In the video, the team shared: “Are your wooden chopping boards starting to smell? If so, it’s easy to kill any lurking nasties and give them a new lease of life without using harsh chemical cleaners.
“All you need is a lemon and some salt. We’ve used coarse sea salt for this. Sprinkle that salt across the board. Then using the lemon half, start working it into the grain of the wood, squeezing gently so it releases some of its juice.
“The salt will dissolve into a thick abrasive paste and this will help kill any bacteria lurking in the scratches, whilst also deodorising the board. Don’t forget to clean both sides and the edges too.
“Then after a few minutes, rinse everything away with hot water, making sure to remove any lemon pulp and then dry thoroughly with a tea towel, leaving it to air-dry fully before storing. This whole process takes under five minutes and once dry, you can add a thin layer of vegetable oil to seal and nourish the wood.”