The Best Plastic and Wooden Cutting Boards

We sliced, diced, chopped, and minced our way through nine cutting boards to find the best.

Best Cutting Boards  Wooden and Plastic
Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Laura Rege

If you can believe it, cutting boards are a hotly contested topic. What's safer, plastic or wood? What type of wood is best for your knives? Why do people even use glass boards? As such, choosing the best cutting board is not an easy decision: you have to consider size, material (wood, bamboo, or plastic), and small things like how much surface area you're willing to sacrifice for drip-catching grooves. That's why we sliced, diced, chopped, and minced on nine different cutting boards to find the ones that will make you and your knives happy.

The Best Plastic Cutting Board: OXO Good Grips Utility Cutting Board

This is the Goldilocks of plastic cutting boards. At 10.5-by-14.5 inches, it offers plenty of space, but isn’t so large that cleaning and storage are made difficult. One side has grooves to catch drips, but the other doesn’t, so you can use that side if you need a completely flat surface. Silicone around the edges makes the board non-slip, and it's made from polypropylene, a non-porous material that yields a stain- and odor-resistant final product. We gave the board a workout by chopping carrots and an onion, mincing ginger, and slicing beets on it—and after one cycle in the dishwasher, it was good as new. The one drawback, if we're being nitpicky, is that the board isn't particularly pretty—but that goes for all plastic boards. If you want an inexpensive utilitarian cutting board that’s easy to wash and store, this OXO Good Grips one is the answer.

Buy it: OXO Good Grips Utility Cutting Board, $15 on Amazon

The Best Wooden Cutting Board: Ziruma Handmade Teak Wood Board

This beautiful teak cutting board impresses before you even use it. It comes in a protective canvas bag, so opening it up feels like an event. It's sturdy yet lightweight, and is easy to lift and move around when cleaning or transferring ingredients into a skillet. At 17-by-11 inches, it offers plenty of workspace but won't take up the whole counter.

Teak is an extremely durable wood—native to Southeast Asia, the tropical tree is known for its water-resistant properties and is traditionally used to make boat fixtures. While cutting boards made of other woods, like maple or walnut, require frequent treatment with oil, teak requires much less maintenance—Ziruma recommends just a yearly rubdown with beeswax. Some woodworking experts point out that since teak contains silica, the same mineral found in glass, its durability might come at the cost of dulling knives. However, others note that the amount of silica it contains is too small to have an a negative effect on your knives. If you don't want to risk ruining the sharpness of your knives, consider a maple board (more on those below).

We found that the Ziruma Teak Board had just the right amount of give—it holds its own against chopping hard and/or slippery items like onions, but is soft enough to feel like you aren't hurting your knives. Like other wooden boards, it's not dishwasher-safe, but after chopping a pound of carrots, mincing ginger, and slicing beets, it cleaned up easily with a bit of hot water and dish soap. No odors or stains remained, and the board help up to all that cutting without showing any signs of wear. Plus, the dark shades in the wood are likely to mask moderate stains in ways that lighter-colored boards wouldn't. The board did slide around on a granite countertop, but a damp paper towel placed under it solved that problem. Just shy $50, it's not particularly cheap, but it is more affordable than similar quality wooden cutting boards.


Buy it: Ziruma/Do It Wiser Large Large Reversible Handmade Teak Wood Cutting Board, $48 on Amazon

How We Tested

We tested immersion blenders simultaneously, so for each cutting board, we chopped a pound of carrots and a large onion, and minced a knob ginger—all of which went into a soup to test the blenders. We wanted to assess the durability and stability of the boards, as well as how easily odors could be cleaned out (or not at all). We also cut steamed beets on each board to look for staining.

Factors We Evaluated

How big is the cutting board? Is it easy to clean and store?

We looked for cutting boards that were big enough to offer plenty of workspace, but not so big that cleaning, storing, or even moving them across the counter would be difficult.

Is the board comfortable to cut on? How does the knife feel on it?

Some boards were very thick, which extended the height of the countertop and made cutting on them feel a little awkward. Others were so flimsy that they slid all over the place without a wet paper towel underneath. We also considered how the knife felt on the surface of each board.

Was it easy to move the chopped items into a pan or bowl?

Once you’ve sliced and diced, you have to get the pieces into a skillet, bowl, or somewhere else—anywhere off the board. We took into account how easy the cutting board was to lift, and noted if there were any attributes that helped with pouring and catching drips. (In the end, neither of our favorites had any of these bells and whistles.)

Was the board easy to clean? Did it stain and/or retain odors?

We paid close attention to how easy it was to wipe stains and odors off the cutting boards, as well as the ongoing maintenance required.

Other Cutting Boards We Tested

We looked for the widest array of cutting boards possible, in as many materials and with as many attributes as we could find. Since prices vary a lot, we considered boards across the spectrum, from a $6 set of plastic cutting mats to a $135 butcher block that you’d likely end up passing on to your grandchildren. We perused reviews on other editorial sites and on Amazon to come up with the final list of nine.

The plastic mats, made by Nicole Home Collection, could be useful to keep around, though we wouldn’t use them for frequent cooking since they didn't protect our knives well. They’re flimsy and slid around a lot, even with a damp paper towel underneath. We could see using them for small tasks like cutting lemons or limes, or putting them over a wooden cutting board when working with raw meat.

Also in the plastic category was the Farberware Non-Slip Plastic Cutting Board, which we didn’t find to be non-slip at all. However, it's a good size (10-by-14 inches), dishwasher-safe and easy to clean—overall, a straightforward $12 plastic cutting board that can take a beating. We give the Epicurean Non-Slip Series Cutting Board a hard pass; it’s made from non-porous wood fiber, so it’s nicer looking than some plastic boards and easy to clean, but it was very unpleasant to cut on, noisy, and way too hard.

We tested one bamboo board: the Totally Bamboo Kauai Cutting Board, which is reasonably priced at $20. It’s attractive, lightweight, and easy to clean (the beets left a very slight discoloration since the material is so light-colored), but the surface felt harder and had less give than other boards. It also slid around quite a bit. Though the product information says it will last an average of 10 years, it requires lots of care: the company sells a special mineral oil to treat the board with every few days during the first month of use and then "as needed."


If you have tons of space, the $110 Teak Haus Edge Grain Traditional Board would make a great addition to your kitchen. At 20-by-15 inches, it takes up significant room, but it’s beautiful and you’d be proud to have it out as a showpiece. It has a convenient drip tray, felt great to cut on, and was very easy to clean, though the ginger smell lingered a bit. Its 1.5-inch height felt a little awkward, so if you're on the shorter side and have a standard countertop, that's something to consider.

Outside of teak wood boards, we tested the 24-by-18 inch John Boos Maple Wood Edge Grain Reversible Cutting Board. This gorgeous, sturdy board felt very knife-friendly and cleaned up well—the beet stained the light-colored maple a little bit, but this is the kind of board that would take on stains and cuts over time and only look better for the wear. It’s a significant investment at $134, but no doubt it would last if you cared for it well (which involves frequent application of Boos Board Cream). With a thickness of 2.25 inches, it will significantly increase the height of your counter, and though it has handgrips built into both sides, it's challenging to move around and store. However, if you're in the market for a board that you can keep on the counter and have forever, this is a solid choice.

Another maple option is the JK Adams Pour Spout Cutting Board, which is a great choice if you frequently carve meats. Both sides of this 16-by-12-inch, $60 board have a pouring well and spout, and one side even has an indentation to hold roasts for carving. We did find that the grooves significantly cut down on the surface area available for cutting, so it comes down to whether you would use the pour spout often enough to make it a worthwhile trade-off. As with other maple boards, it cleaned easily, though the beets stained the light-colored wood slightly. The manufacturer recommends treating the board with beeswax and mineral oil.

The Takeaway

If you want a no muss, no fuss plastic cutting board that's easy to clean and will hold up for quite a while, get the OXO Good Grips Utility Cutting Board. For those loyal to wooden boards, the beautiful Ziruma Handmade Teak Board has all the attributes of wood with the least possible hassle.
