A common question of many home cooks is how to care for wooden kitchen utensils and are they sanitary. Wooden spoons, cutting boards, and other kitchen tools are the workhorses of the kitchen. They can be used for all types of cooking. If well cared for, wooden utensils can last for years.
Wood is one of the oldest materials used to make kitchen tools, and for good reason.
Wooden utensils are also among the best tools to be used on nonstick cookware, as they won’t scratch the coating like metal utensils might.
When they’re made, most wooden spoons, utensils and cutting boards are treated with mineral oils, which creates an inert, neutral surface that will not allow bacteria to reside.
To keep your wooden spoons and cutting boards in the best shape possible, follow these tips:
1. Using Lemon and Salt to Clean the Utensils
Lemon and salt have been one of those combinations that people all across the globe have used to clean wooden utensils as this guarantees super cleaning at the cheapest cost. The biggest advantage of this combination of Lemon and Salt is that it removes different odors from the utensils, especially the spoons that are used to cook and then the chopping boards that are used in the process of cutting vegetables and chopping of meat as well at times.
All you need to do here is to spread some salt on the chopping board and then cut a Lemon into two halves and rub it nicely on the surface and then rinse it off with cold water.
2. Boiling the Utensils in Water for 5-8 Minutes and Drying Them Under The Sun
There are two ways to clean wooden kitchen utensils using this process:
Method 1: In the first way, you can just dip the spoons and other wooden utensils into the normal water and boil them thoroughly for 5-8 minutes. Let the hot water cool down to normal temperature and then take out the utensils from water and keep them under the Sunlight to dry them. After the utensils are free from moisture, wipe them with a dry cloth or something like that and you will find them looking almost completely cleaned.
Method 2: The second method is also pretty easy and simple as all you need to do is to dip the wooden utensils in hot boiling water for 30-40 minutes and just keep them on a soaking board overnight and the next morning they will be as clean as new.
3. Use Baking Soda as a Wooden Utensil Cleaning Agent
Baking Soda is not just used in cooking as it also has the properties that make it a strong cleaning agent as well. No matter how dirty your wooden kitchen utensils get, just a spoon full of baking soda along with any normal dishwashing agent will be more than enough to give them an ever new look each and every single day.
Another big advantage of using baking soda is that it takes away all the odor from the plates and utensils made up of wood as they have a tendency to soak the odor and the flavor of the things that they are used to cook.
4. Use Vinegar as a Cleaning Agent
Vinegar is also among the super cleaning agents that can be used by people when they want to clean the utensils made up of wood. Vinegar is soft on the utensils but harsh on the odor and any type of residual left on the utensils. This is because of the reason that vinegar has a good amount of citric acid in it that helps to clean the utensils thoroughly.
Vinegar is something that is found in each and every house as it is used in cooking a lot of different things. So if any of the wooden utensils in your kitchen need super strong cleaning then give vinegar a try to clean them.
Conclusion:
Just remember that all these four methods mentioned above are super easy as all the main cleaning agents discussed in the post are always available in your homes. These are a few simple real-life hacks to keep the wooden kitchen utensils clean even after years of using them. So make sure that when you clean the Kitchen next time, you actually use any of these methods in Kitchen Cleaning rather than the old redundant methods you were using.
I hope that you will find this post very helpful! Feel free to add any more such methods in the comment box below, and do share this post with your friends and loved ones to make their life easier.
