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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Anna Berrill

What’s the best material for a chopping board, and how to avoid mould?

Hands chopping Tuscan kale on a wooden chopping board.
The natural density of wood absorbs the impact of the blade, making them kinder to your knives. Photograph: Green Eyes/Alamy

I saw an influencer advocating for titanium chopping boards. Are they really the way to go? If not, which material is best? My wooden one has some black mould.
Lenka, by email
“From the off, no!” says Itamar Srulovich, whose latest cookbook, Honey & Co Daily, co-authored by Sarit Packer, is published later this spring. “The technology of chopping boards works, it’s bulletproof – this is criminal!” Sam Clark, co-founder of London’s Moro and Morito, couldn’t agree more: “The idea of chopping on a titanium board, with metal against metal, sends shivers down my spine,” he says.

Of course, the surface on which you choose to chop will impact your knife, and for Milli Taylor, who is behind the When in Rome Substack, she “couldn’t imagine anything worse than titanium”. As Hugh Worsley, founder of knife brand Allday Goods, puts it: “Every time you cut, the very fine edge of your knife, which is microscopically thin, meets the chopping surface. If that surface is too hard, it damages the edge, causing it to dull faster.” A titanium board, which has no give, is just going to slowly destroy your knives: “I can see the benefit of it from a cleanliness point of view,” Worsley concedes, but, other than that, “it just makes no sense”.

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