How to clean a *used* wood cutting board?

I scored a couple of nice hardwood cutting boards. However the source is unknown. I tend to be cautious about items of mysterious provenance.

I need to go farther than just soap and hot water for the initial cleaning. Some disinfecting method is needed.

What do you think? Rubbing alcohol 95%? Hydrogen peroxide? I don't want to use chlorine bleach -- the boards will smell, and 15 minutes in a water bath might lead to warping or delamination. I could also boil them in a giant pot but the same water bath issues come to mind.

If the board is thick enough and not warped, I would run it through a thickness planer. If the board did not have deep penetration of water/dirt then it will renew its surfaces completely.

Lemon juice and sunlight.

Hm! I've been thinking about water for cleaning. But for sterilizing, what about fire? Heat gun or propane torch? Scorch and scrape?

does the board have stains that lead you to believe something other than food was cut on it?

I've read where even butcher blocks for cutting raw meat are cleaned with salt...I think that's a thread here somewhere.

I like the idea of a good scrape and then maybe a salt scrub.

Peroxide foams in the presence of proteins so maybe that could give you a clue what has been on it.

we have a big maple slab table to cut on but no meat or onions allowed...a separate small oak board for those and that board gets a good rinse with water and sometimes a salt rub and some sun.

I do scrape the slab occasionally to remove a little residue from oils and what I suppose are vegetable and fruit juices even though it gets wiped dry frequently and oiled occasionally.

i would also sand it (i don't have a planer, so it would be sanding) and then lemon juice and salt and sunlight, followed by the oil and beeswax treatment.

Could you bake them in an oven? You should be able to manage the temperature so that they don't ignite. Should avoid some of the warping problems.

If it is heavily soiled, I like the idea of resurfacing the board with a planer or sander.

My usual 'big cleanup' for wood cutting boards involves an initial wash with soap. I dry it and then follow up with a lemon and salt scrub. Rinse and dry. I do a final vinegar rinse and let the board air dry in sunlight.

After this is done, I will oil the wood and put it back in service.

I bought a few months back a Hoosier table base (originally under the enamel top, which was removed). It had (obviously) been used in a garage. After hours of scraping it, it still has oil which comes up out of the wood, black spots, etc. so despite lemon juice, salt, water, and scraping, we do NOT prep food on it.

A sander is probably our next strategy to clear the oil and other embedded stuff out of the wood.

We just bought, at auction , a piece of 1" thick maple cutting board. The owner said they'd used it for their kitchen table until the cutting board split at a glue line. My partner has sanded the large piece and intends to cut it down to sit atop the Hoosier base as a replacement top. It lived in a basement for decades after it split acc. to the owner, but (obviously) it was food safe before that.

Sanding, scraping, lemon, salt, and water are what we're using. Sometimes it works, sometimes not!

I had to do something like this, except it was my own cutting board that I let get stained and maybe a few spots of mold.
I cleaned it with salt and a little lemon juice. The salt was only damp so it stayed gritty and scoured everything that wasn't absorbed in the wood.
After that I sanded the surface until it was much lighter and clean looking, then coated it with mineral oil. I need to recoat it every few months to keep it looking oiled.
I picked mineral oil because I was sure it was food-grade and was easy to work with. I got it from a pharmacy.

Just found a related thread about the safety of wood cutting boards:
https://permies.com/t/189123/permaculture-home-care-cleaning/wooden-chopping-board-hygienic

I didn't read the whole thread. But it sounds like a wash with soapy water followed by quick drying may be sufficient.

For a deep clean of wood cutting boards I don't know the history of...

I start with sanding, removing most of the cuts and leveling out the board.

Scrub with corse salt (no iodine, so kosher or pickling salt) and a small amount of water.

Let dry completely for a few days.

Smell

Repeat salt scrub and drying if needed.  If smell won't go away, could try a hydrogen peroxide soak but this might damage the wood.  It might become a non food board.

Oil with food safe oil.  Repeating several days until it soaks it all up.

Salt, plus lack of moisture, plus oil, all work together to removed most nasty invisible beasties.   It remove most other contaminants too.


Another variation I've been meaning to try is extreme kosher.  Someone described it to me once as she was helping purify a house so a family could live there.  It sounded like some useful techniques to purify a home, but I never found the name for this kind of kosher where even the shelf that the pot sits on has to be purified for the meal to fit their requirements.  

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Hm! I've been thinking about water for cleaning. But for sterilizing, what about fire? Heat gun or propane torch? Scorch and scrape?

Haha, that sounds so overkill and fun. I do think the oven and sunlight recommendations are practical. The latter especially for people in warmer areas.