The Best Cutting Boards, According to Our Tests

Best Wood Cutting Board

John Boos Chop-N-Slice Maple Cutting Board

$87 at Amazon $30 at Target $87 at Walmart

The iconic wooden cutting boards from John Boos are beloved by working restaurant pros along with celebrity chefs including Ina Garten and Giada De Laurentiis. Made from maple, a soft wood that won't dull your blades, they're well-constructed and heavy enough to stay in place as you chop. Plus, the wood is gorgeous. It can be a beautiful permanent addition to your countertop or a lovely choice for serving a charcuterie board.

As with any wooden cutting board, however, the Boos Chop-N-Slice needs proper care. It absolutely cannot go in the dishwasher — ever. It must be oiled about once a month to protect the wood from drying out and cracking. We found that oiling the new board before beginning our tests made a big difference in how soft and smooth the surface felt. If you stick to the proper maintenance schedule, the board can last for years. In terms of price, the Chop-N-Slice is almost exactly average among the wooden cutting boards in our tests, which makes it a great deal for a Boos board.

Material: Maple | Dimensions: 20 x 15 x 1.25 inches | Weight: 10 pounds | Dishwasher-Safe: No

Best Plastic Cutting Board

KitchenAid Classic Plastic Cutting Board

$10 at Amazon $10 at Walmart View on Perigold.com

KitchenAid's plastic cutting board has everything you need and nothing you don't. It's lightweight, with silicone caps on both ends that provide a secure nonslip grip. There's a juice-catching gutter around one side, ideal for carving a rib roast or Thanksgiving turkey without making a mess, or you can flip the board over for a flat slicing surface with a little more area. When you're done, it goes right in the dishwasher. Plus, the price is great — not too far off from the cheapest model we tested, and well below average.

We put this board through the wringer in testing, using it for heavy test kitchen ingredient prep for several days. It held up nicely and didn't damage our kitchen knives, which can sometimes be problematic with hard plastic cutting boards. The downside of that is that sharp knives left cuts and scratches in the material, sometimes deep enough to hold onto bits of herbs or other foods, A trip through the dishwasher was sufficient to get it fully clean, though hand-washing was less effective at getting rid of odors.

Material: Plastic | Dimensions: 14 x 11 x 0.6 inches | Weight: 1.9 pounds | Dishwasher-Safe: Yes

Best Bamboo Cutting Board

Food52 Five Two The Happy Medium Bamboo Double-Sided Cutting Board

$40 at Food52 View on Schoolhouse.com

Fast-growing, sustainable bamboo is a good choice for inexpensive wooden kitchen tools, and Food52's model is our favorite bamboo cutting board. One side has a juice gutter, plus a triangular spout for pouring off the collected drippings to make gravy. The other side has a slot that holds your phone up so you can see the recipe you're working on. It's a small but useful feature that few other cutting boards offer. (The narrow slot held multiple different phone models without trouble, though you may have to remove your case if you have a thick one.)

The Five Two cutting board is of great value among wooden models, though bamboo generally won't hold up as well in the long term as other woods. We found a few nicks on the surface, and we think we spotted a small crack in the phone slot area starting to develop after a few rounds of washing. The board's surface is also quite smooth, and the light weight of bamboo let it move around on the counter in our tests. We'd recommend putting a towel underneath to hold it in place, especially while chopping hard items like potatoes.

Material: Bamboo | Dimensions: 11.25 x 14.5 x 1 inches | Weight: 3.75 pounds | Dishwasher-Safe: No

Best Carving Board

Made In The Butcher Block

View on Madeincookware.com

If you're taking on a dinner-party cooking challenge like beef tenderloin or a whole fish, you need an appropriately grand carving board to present it tableside. Made In's Butcher Block is the best cutting board for meat we tested, thanks to its impressive look and generous juice-collecting gutter that keeps the tabletop dry. It's built in a very similar way to the John Boos model above but with the additional benefits of the gutter and carrying handles on the sides of the board.

We were quite happy with how the Made In board performed, but we did note that it seemed to dry out faster than other wooden models. You'll want to be especially sure to apply oil, as often as every week or two. (For a few extra bucks, you can order a package of this board with Made In's conditioning cream, but any food-safe wood maintenance product should work.)

Material: Maple | Dimensions: 17.75 x 11.75 x 1.6 inches | Weight: 8 pounds | Dishwasher-Safe: No

Best Plastic Set

Gorilla Grip Cutting Board Set

$19 at Amazon $36 at Walmart View on Gorillagrip.com

If you're looking for a bargain, the price is right on Gorilla Grip's set. It gives you three cutting boards of three different sizes, for less money than most of the individual boards we tested. They're well-constructed, too, with rubber sides that provide grip against the counter, juice grooves on all three sizes, and large handles on one side that let you bring the board to the stove and slide ingredients directly into a pot or pan. Nearly two dozen colorways are available, so if you want a grey board with mint-green handles or a brightly colored assortment, either one can be yours.

However, even the largest of Gorilla Grip's three boards isn't all that huge, at 16 by 11.2 inches. That probably won't be able to fit a whole turkey or whole smoked brisket without making a big mess.

Material: Plastic | Dimensions: 16 x 11.2 x 0.37 inches; 13.8 x 9.6 x 0.37 inches; 11.8 x 8 x 0.37 inches | Total Weight: 4.25 pounds | Dishwasher-Safe: Yes

Best Wooden Set

Caraway Cutting Board Set

$195 at Amazon $195 at Target View on Nordstrom

You probably want to have more than one size of cutting board. A little one is quick to clean and perfect for slicing a sandwich or single piece of fruit, while a larger board is needed for large meal prep or meat carving. And, of course, it's a good idea from a food-safety perspective to use separate tools for veggies and raw meat.

Caraway's matching set gives you everything you need for every cutting job, plus lots of serving uses. The largest board has carrying handles on one side and a serving divot on the other that can hold crackers for a cheese or charcuterie platter; seasonings to sprinkle on slices of prime rib; or condiments to spoon out onto appetizer plates. The all-purpose medium board has a cracker well on one side, with a juice gutter on the other. Even the smallest size has a small divot for serving (and a plain flat cutting surface on the other side). The trio comes with a convenient holder for storage or to be used as a dish-drying rack.

Our major complaint with the Caraway boards is that their birch wood is fairly easy to scratch. They got some nicks and dings in testing, especially when we used serrated bread knives. Like most light-colored woods, birch is also prone to picking up stains from beets and similar dark-colored items; nothing stained permanently in testing, but we needed lemon juice to help scrub a few times. And even considering that it includes three separate cutting boards and a rack, this set is still fairly pricy.

Material: Birch | Dimensions: 17.17 x 12.2 inches; 13.82 x 10.43 inches; 10.43 x 7.4 inches | Weight: 3.55 pounds; 2.67 pounds; 0.85 pounds | Dishwasher-Safe: No

Best Plastic Oversized

OXO Good Grips Carving and Cutting Board

$33 at Amazon $33 at kohls.com View on Webstaurantstore.com

OXO's Good Grips line is full of plastic tools durable enough to hold up over the long term, and its enormous cutting board is no exception. This accessory can handle anything from a leg of lamb to a whole ham. The plastic is thin and lightweight, but it's strong enough that the board will barely flex. It's an ideal material, not so hard that it'll dull knives but still able to hold up to serious slicing with minimal damage. (A serrated bread knife left some scratches in testing, but it did better than many other plastic options.) There's also a juice groove on one side and a completely flat surface on the other for multifunctionality.

This board has rubberized ends, with tiny "feet" at each corner to help hold the board in place on the counter, but we found them too small to be super-effective. We had to press down while cutting to keep the surface from moving around. The huge size was also somewhat impractical: This cutting board is dishwasher-safe, but it was too wide and tall for a standard dishwasher. We would have had to lay the board sideways atop the rack to get it to fit, so we hand-washed instead. Thankfully, that was quite effective. A single scrub removed any stains and odors.

Material: Plastic | Dimensions: 21.1 x 14.5 inches | Weight: 3.42 pounds | Dishwasher-Safe: Yes

Best Wooden Oversized

TeakHaus Edge Grain Carving Board

$109 at Amazon $120 at Sur La Table $185 at Walmart

If you've picked up a monster turkey for your extended family's Thanksgiving feast, a standard cutting board might not work. But at 18 by 24 inches, the TeakHaus board should be able to handle the biggest birds and most colossal cuts of beef. Its teak wood is especially resistant to water damage, and its juice groove is deep enough to catch lots of spills — a rogue blueberry rolled in and got stuck there during testing.

The downside of such a large cutting board is that it's not practical for everyday use. The TeakHaus weighs 15 pounds and couldn't fit inside our sink to wash. We had to scrub, rinse, rotate, and repeat. It's likely wider than your kitchen drawers, and you'll probably have to find a special cabinet corner to accommodate it. However, it's pretty reasonably priced for a huge, high-quality wooden cutting board.

Material: Teak | Dimensions: 24 x 18 x 1.5 inches | Weight: 15 pounds | Dishwasher-Safe: No