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One indispensable kitchen utensil is the cutting board. Whether they are made of wood or plastic, cutting boards require proper cleaning. A quick wash will not eliminate bacteria that can find its way into crevices caused by regular cuts and chops from your knife or a cleaver. Special care needs to be taken when the board is used for cutting raw meat.

It is safer to use two boards: one for vegetables, bread and cooked meats; the other solely for raw meat. Color-coded boards help to make the distinction and effectively eliminates cross-contamination of raw meat bacteria that leads to food poisoning.

Food poisoning can be quite serious. It can leave you sick and weak for weeks. The good news is we can prevent incidents of food poisoning by cleaning our cutting board the correct way. Some homes have a dishwasher, which not only cleans, but also sanitizes your cutting boards. Do not fret if you do not have a dishwasher. Manually cleaning your board correctly will give you the same result.

Here is a simple method for keeping those cutting boards clean and sanitized. First, give your cutting board a good scrub with hot, sudsy water. Then sanitize the clean board for 10 minutes with a solution of 3 tablespoons of vinegar to one cup of water. For easy application, keep this solution in a spray bottle. Let the board air-dry or wipe it with a clean kitchen towel before storing it away.

Tip: Hydrogen peroxide at 3% strength is another way to go. Both products are safe for using around food. Use this simple method to keep your cutting or chopping board free of bacteria. Prevent food poisoning by doing it right every time.

By: Abe Kline

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Food preparation in the kitchen requires specific tools to make things easier, which accounts for the popularity of plastic cutting boards. Whether you are preparing hard to cut through meat or just simply chopping down green vegetables and the like, it would do you good to use kitchen utensil to help you with your task.

While most people have been used to seeing wooden boards on their kitchens, it is basically their plastic counterparts that provide an alternative to using these kitchen tools. As a relatively modest invention, these boards made of plastic will make slicing and cutting tasks in the kitchen easy with their beneficial features.

Because they are made of plastic, these cutting boards are considered to be very affordable. Being reasonably priced, one can just go ahead and buy two or three of these for specific food preparation functions. One should take note however, that plastic does not hold well when combined with sharp objects, so you should be prepared to risk them getting sliced and scarred.

This is a factor that makes some people turn their noses up on plastic cutting boards, as these scars are prone to harboring certain bacteria and the like. But the good thing that regular kitchen aficionados usually say about boards made of plastic is that they are very easy to clean. This holds true, as the surface of plastic is often non-porous, leaving no space for any meat or vegetable particles to soak through the material.

This makes sanitation of the plastic cutting board easy as one can use a disinfectant spray and just wipe it off clean. It also makes for easy cleaning with hot water and some dishwashing soap. They are also dishwasher friendly so popping one in with the dishes would make cleaning a breeze for anyone to do.

Of course, thorough cleaning should be done to ensure that no residue is left behind. Cooking food might leave you free of bacteria, however, there are certain vegetables, meat, or fish that can be consumed raw. If these raw foods had been sliced on plastic cutting boards which were not properly cleaned then it could make them unhealthy.

While these disadvantages derived from boards made of plastic are often considered to be health issues, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has mandated commercial food service establishments to use plastic cutting boards in food preparation. The reason behind this is that sanitizing them is easier compared to cleaning the ones made of wood. Since wooden boards are made of porous material, they tend to absorb the residue coming from the prepared food. This makes it difficult to effectively clean out, particularly certain residue that have already soaked into the material.

For those who also want something that can work homogeneously with their kitchens, cutting boards made from plastic will definitely be a good choice. As plastic is easily moldable, you can get plastic boards in different shapes and sizes, as well as colors, making them easy to match with your kitchen and other utensils. Click on the links below for a great deal on your next plastic cutting board.

By: Everett Woods

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