Food preparation can take a lot of a time, and if you’re doing it correctly, you’ll be using a number of different kitchen utensils to chop, crush and cook your meals. But once you’ve made your marvellous culinary creation, you’ve got to face cleaning all of your equipment.
Chopping boards are a staple in every kitchen, helping to provide a secure and flat surface for you to prep your vegetables, meat and fish, or anything else that needs cutting. They can also help prevent cross contamination between foods, with professional kitchens using different colour boards to chop different food products on.
Chopping boards can also be made from different materials, including wood, plastic, glass, steel, or marble, but there’s one which could pose ‘hidden nasties’. The team at BBC Good Food warned that wooden boards have the capacity to store bacteria.
To help banish any hidden germs, Good Food has shared a chemical-free cleaning solution which uses two household ingredients to make sure your wooden chopping board is bacteria-free. All you’ll need is a lemon and some salt.
In an Instagram post, they wrote: “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 explained: “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-fry 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.”