Kitchen Tip: Cutting Boards

From Harold McGee, food scientist and writer whose new book, Keys To Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Food and Recipes, landed on shelves recently.

On wooden vs. plastic cutting boards: "It turns out that wooden cutting boards are good in a couple of ways — they're porous so they tend to soak up juices from cutting meats and fish, for example, and that carries the bacteria down into the cutting board where they're not at the surface anymore. And woods often contain anti-bacterial compounds in them so there's kind of a natural antibiotic in the surface of the wood. Plastic cutting boards are easier to clean and are safer to put in the dishwasher, for example, but they also will tend to develop scars and bacteria will lodge in the scars and cause problems later. So I actually have a couple of each and use both. When a plastic cutting board develops scars, I replace it."