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    Best Cutting Board Oils

    We intentionally ruined cutting boards to test four oil or wax products to fix them

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    Thirteen Chefs Food Grade Mineral Oil, Boos Block Board Cream and Mystery Oil with Brush set, Clapham's Beeswax, and Howard Cutting Board Oil on wooden cutting board with light brown background
    CR tested four popular cutting board oils and creams, and one stood out.
    Photo: Emilie Harjes/Consumer Reports

    Of all the kitchen products you use, nothing takes a beating quite like your cutting board. Many of us use our boards daily for food preparation, forcing them to succumb to the constant battering of bread knives or chef’s knife wounds made from slicing and dicing vegetables and meat. For a tool that can take so much abuse, it’s surprising to discover how improper maintenance—like keeping it soaked in water for too long or washing it in the dishwasher—can quickly destroy a good-quality wooden cutting board.

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    Using a cutting board oil regularly (depending on how often you use and wash your board) can help preserve its surface, prevent cracks and other wear and tear, and extend its life. After putting four John Boos wooden cutting boards through the wringer (we washed them several times in a dishwasher, soaked them in water, and chopped numerous veggies on them), CR applied four popular oils and creams to each one to determine which products worked the best. 

    The ones we used were either a food-safe mineral-oil-based oil or a cream with beeswax as its key ingredient. We didn’t find considerable differences among them, with one exception. There’s just one cutting board maintenance kit that we thought was the only one you’ll ever need. (It even comes with a sturdy and pretty fabulous applicator.)

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    Lisa Fogarty

    Lisa Fogarty is a senior multimedia content creator at Consumer Reports. She studied journalism at Columbia University and has written numerous health, parenting, fitness, and wellness articles for The New York Times, Psychology Today, Vogue, and NPR. Lisa is passionate about mental health and is a co-creator of The Hunger Trap Podcast, which focuses on eating disorders. In her spare time she surfs, plays the guitar, and kickboxes. Follow her on X: @lisacfogarty