The 7 Best Cutting Boards, According to Our Tests

Our Favorite Cutting Boards

After extensive testing, we chose the John Boos Block Chop-N-Slice Maple Wood Cutting Board as our favorite wooden model for its balance of quality and cost. Versatile and durable, it’s a great board for daily use but also visually appealing to present a cheese and charcuterie spread. Our top-rated plastic cutting board, the KitchenAid Classic Plastic Cutting Board, has nice features at a low price.

How We Tested Cutting Boards

We pitted a long list head-to-head for this story, including 11 individual plastic cutting boards, 11 plastic sets, 19 wooden individuals, and two wooden sets. Altogether, our tests included 70 different cutting boards of varying sizes, shapes, and materials.

• Garlic Test: We minced and crushed a few garlic cloves into a paste on each board, then let it sit for 30 minutes. We then hand-washed the boards, noting whether they retained any garlic odor. We sent dishwasher-safe boards that still smelled like garlic through a dishwasher cycle and gave them another smell test.
• Serrated Knife Test: We sliced bread on each board using a serrated knife, and then looked for scratches, gouges, and other indications of damage.
• Everyday Use: For the rest of the 2-week testing period, we used each test item as a standard everyday cutting board, making sure to chop hard produce like carrots or potatoes, cut slippery foods like fish, and slice soft and juicy items like tomatoes. We used all sizes of boards included in sets. We rated them on several factors, including stability on the counter, whether food could slide around on the board surface if the boards dulled our knives, and if we found any damage or deterioration over the 2 weeks.
• Cleaning Test: We washed the boards following the manufacturer's instructions. We hand-washed each board at least once, and put dishwasher-safe boards in the dishwasher at least once. We looked for permanent stains, any cracking and splitting of wooden boards, and any warping of plastic ones.
  

After all the usage tests were completed, we revealed the retail prices of the cutting boards to compare and consider value. At the time of testing, the plastic boards and sets ranged in price from $6 to $151, with an average of $49. The wooden items ranged from $18 to $255, averaging $87.

Factors to Consider

Material

Cutting boards are very commonly made from wood or plastic. Plastic is generally cheaper than wood, lighter, and easier to clean. However, the smooth surface makes plastic liable to slide around on countertops, and hard plastic materials can chip or dull knife blades. Wood is softer and thus easier on knives, and its color and grain can be made into a much nicer-looking tool than plastic. A nice wood cutting board can last longer than a plastic one. To keep it in good condition, we recommend hand-washing and periodic oiling.

Size

Cutting boards come in a wide range of sizes, from just barely big enough to cut an apple with a paring knife, to a massive carving board that can accommodate a 25-pound turkey with room to spare. A bigger board gives you more space for prep, but the largest ones are impractical for everyday use; they're heavy and might not even fit in your sink, let alone your dishwasher. There's no standard size, but a "medium" cutting board will measure between 12 and 18 inches on its longest side. Anything longer than that veers into oversized territory.

Features

Cutting board design doesn't get super-complicated, but there are some helpful features to look out for. Plastic models might have a cutout handle for easy transportation and hanging storage, while heavier wooden ones can have a hollow in the side of the board to help you get a good grip.

A juice groove can also be useful when carving a whole bird or other large cut of meat; it'll keep your counters mess-free and allow you to collect the flavorful liquid for gravy. Lightweight plastic boards can slide around on the countertop, and another feature you might find for these is a nonslip base or "feet" made of silicone or rubber.

Other Cutting Boards We Tested

Strong Contenders

Yoshihiro Hi-Soft Professional Grade Cutting Board ($125 at Amazon)

Made of special extra-soft plastic, this cutting board is designed to protect ultra-sharp carbon steel knife blades, which are especially vulnerable to chips and dings from hard plastic. But we didn't find blade-dulling to be much of a problem with any of our tested boards, and this one is incredibly expensive.

Wüsthof TPU Medium Cutting Board ($45 at Wüsthof)

This plastic board is big enough for serious meal prep but light enough that you could throw it in your bag to bring to a potluck. The material's rough texture helps hold the board to the counter and hold food to the board, whether you're using the juice-gutter side or the flat side. The only thing that kept it off our list of favorites is the high price for its size.

Material The rePrep Set ($72 at Material)

Material's sustainable reBoards are made from a combination of recycled plastic and sugarcane for a unique texture, with lots of fun colors available, and this set gets you a small, medium, and large one. We love the aesthetic of these boards, and they're great for light chopping tasks. However, they're expensive, and the tiny nonslip feet on the corners are removable and easy to lose.

Henckels 3-Piece Cutting Board Set ($35 at Amazon)

We're big fans of the knives from Henckels; its inexpensive plastic cutting board set...does the job. The nonstick feet on each board are effective, though they make it so you can only cut on one side. Even the largest board is also fairly small.

KitchenAid Classic Rubberwood Cutting Board ($25 at Amazon)

Natural rubber is made from tree sap; this board is made of wood from that same kind of tree, which is durable and sustainable. This board is impressively inexpensive and performed pretty average in our tests. It's a great choice, but for a low-cost wooden cutting board, we give the edge to the Food52 bamboo model instead.

John Boos Maple Wood Cutting Board ($125 at Amazon)

Another great heavy-duty board from John Boos, this model is a quarter-inch thicker than the Chop-N-Slice above, and it has hollows in the sides that act as handles. These are nice upgrades but not worth the massive increase in price over our favorite wooden cutting board.

The Boardsmith Maple End Grain Butcher Cutting Board ($220 at The Boardsmith)

"Luxury cutting board" is not a phrase you see often, but that's exactly what this is. The hand-crafted boards from The Boardsmith are beautiful, built to last, and fully customizable with many sizes, colors, and features. They are also astonishingly expensive.

Totally Bamboo 3-Piece Bamboo Cutting Board Set ($18 at Amazon)

With a trio of wooden boards for well under 10 bucks each, this set is a great value. We love the carry handles on the two larger sizes, but we have some concerns about the build quality. These are thin compared to competitors, and we worry they'd start to deteriorate quickly.

What Didn't Make the List

The lowest-performing cutting boards in our tests all suffered from the problem of low-quality materials or construction. They weren't necessarily the cheapest in price, but they felt the cheapest, picking up deep scratches and starting to deteriorate after only a handful of uses and washes. We found that higher cost can indicate higher quality, but only to a point — we left some of the most expensive models off our list because they didn't perform any better than more moderately priced ones. Notable brands that we tested but didn't feature include Farberware, Our Place, Dexas, Williams Sonoma, and Sur La Table.

Our Expertise

• Food & Wine contributor Ariane Resnick wrote this story. She is a special diet chef, certified nutritionist, and bestselling author who has owned more cutting boards than she could count and is a fan of heavy wood boards.
• Jason Horn updated this story with additional testing data. Food & Wine's senior updates writer, he's been covering food and drinks for nearly 20 years. His arsenal of cutting boards includes a John Boos stolen from the set of a Food Network show he was a production assistant on. (Don't tell anybody!)