How To Clean Wooden Chopping Boards With Lemon

Are your wooden cutting boards looking a little stained or worse for wear? It’s easy to give them a deep clean with this simple method using natural ingredients. Find out how to clean wooden chopping boards with lemon for safe fresh food preparation.

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Why you need to clean wooden cutting boards regularly

Wooden chopping boards are the better option to use in the kitchen for so many reasons. They look great, are gentler on knives than other alternatives and they don’t release harmful microplastics like plastic chopping boards.

Natural wood surfaces will wear with time and develop small knife cuts and grooves, These can trap food and bacteria. Some foods will also cause marks and stains – for me it’s always the red peppers. They can also absorb odours from foods, especially onion, garlic and other aromatics.

Washing with warm soapy water after use and drying your wooden chopping boards thoroughly will go a long way to keeping them clean.

However, your cutting boards are bound to develop some stains and discolouration. They will also benefit from a deep clean of all the deeper cuts and scratches from time to time to maintain a safe food preparation surface.

What you’ll need

For this simple chopping board cleaner, you’ll just need 2 things:

• half a fresh lemon
• 1- 2 Tablespoons coarse cooking salt

If you have a spare half a lemon in the fridge, or a lemon that is a little past its best and not going to be used in a recipe, this is the perfect way to use it up.

This cleaning method relies on the salt as an abrasive. So make sure you use coarse cooking salt and not the more refined table salt. How much salt you will need depends on the size of your cutting board.

How to clean wooden chopping boards

Start with a clean chopping board. It’s a good idea to rinse and pat dry before starting, as it’s easier to work with when still slightly damp.

Lay the board on a flat surface. I like to use my sink drying board, but a flat bench top or tale is fine too. However, you may need to place a tea towel underneath to protect the surface from lemon juice spills.

Sprinkle a generous amount of coarse cooking salt across the cutting board.

Take the half a lemon and place cut side down on the salted board. Scrub the surface of the board, applying gentle pressure to the lemon as you go. This will help release the lemon juice. The salt and lemon juice will form a paste.

Leave the lemon and salt mixture for a few minutes, then rinse off with warm water and dry thoroughly.

(If your wooden chopping board has stronger stains, you can leave the lemon and salt mixture on the stains a little longer before rinsing.)

To preserve your wooden chopping boards for longer, it’s a good idea to oil them with a food safe oil a few times a year. After a deep clean is a great time to do this. I like to use a beeswax and orange oil combination.

More ways to use lemons

Cleaning your wooden chopping boards is one great way to use up a left over lemon half. You can also easily clean your microwave with lemon too. For more ideas, check out this list of 14 tips for using fresh lemons.

Or if you have lots of lemons to use, why not try decorating a vase with lemon slices. And of course, we always love using fresh lemons in our lemon recipes.

For more ways to use and enjoy lemons and other citrus fruits, we’d love you to subscribe,