Stop Using Mineral Oil for Cutting Boards and Utensils!

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Think you know the best food safe finish? Think again! I tested a few of the most common food safe finishes and you might be surprised at the results.

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[a-q]

Do the new owners of the house know you keep coming back to record a youtube show?

[jeffeverde]

Tung oil is good for utensils and *decorative* cutting boards. But a film finish on a functional cutting board doesn't make sense. Through oxidation, tung oil (and other drying oils) cross-link to form a polymer film. Expose that film to a knife and you have a minced film finish. For a working cutting board / butcher block, mineral oil penetrates, which hydrates the wood to avoid cracking/checking and helps to avoid absorption of what you're cutting. The addition of beeswax has a twofold benefit - it seals the wood grain to further prevent drying, and it creates pliable *self-healing* film that resist moisture penetration from what you're cutting.

[jasonthorpe]

I made a bunch of those checkerboard cutting boards inspired by one of your first videos, and gave most of them to my friends as wedding gifts. 15 years later, I can tell you they have now featured prominently in more than a few divorce proceedings. I'm just saying, people's love of those cutting boards outlasted more than a few marriages. And for the record, the Salad bowl finish has also lasted the test of time

[orange-micro-fiber]

4:00 Polymerization might be partial. Polymer chains can be short, medium, long, etc. Shorter usually means more liquid. I think of polymers as legos. The individual molecule is a brick and you can squish bricks together to make more chains. The shorter, the easier they move around each other. The longer, the more stuck/hard they get.

[RySu-iv]

Tung oil contains Eleostearic acid which is toxic. It is generally considered safe when fully cured. However, if you're planning to use it for maintenance, I rather recommend food-grade mineral oil or food-grade drying oil such as walnut, linseed, or perilla oil as these are safe to digest when it's not fully cured.

[darkseidjoe]

Tung oil is great, it also helps prevent staining in my maple utensils with spaghetti sauce, gravies, and soups. I cook a lot and I'm really only reapplying tung every 6mo with heavily used items and annually with my cutting boards. Great experiment, it helped satisfy a lot of my own curiosities.

[WoodInn]

I've been using pure tung for years, but have never tortured it the way you did. I am so glad your results did not make me regret my choices. Well done.

[Adam-eelm]

Hi WW: You didn't talk about how to thin tung oil .. what type of ratio do you use with the citrus solvent ?

[justalurkr]

The older I get, the clearer it becomes that I shouldn't have dropped high school chemistry.

[MR-vgyn]

I realize that would be hard to test, but for cutting boards, it would make a lot more sense to see how the finish fares against knives. I don't know about your, but I've never cooked my cutting boards. Yeah, tung oil cures, but will that matter against a sharp knife? Honestly, for me, the biggest issue with a finish on a cutting board is that it will be destroyed by the knife cuts and will have to be reapplied regularly because of that, not because the finish dissolves in some way or another.
If you have to reapply the finish regularly anyway, I like mineral oil exactly because it doesn't cure, since that means I don't have to _wait_ for it to cure. I can apply the oil, wait a few minutes, wipe off all excess and the board's ready to go again if need be.

[sethdrake]

3:05 something interesting and important about linseed oil: if left unpolymerized, it can actually spontaneously polymerize and undergo a cross-linking oxidation reaction if left exposed for a while which creates a lot of heat, meaning that anything with high surface area, like for example any rags used to apply it can actually self-ignite and burn down whatever building they're in.

[anartificer]

For those wondering, polymerized linseed oil is just heat treated linseed oil. It's another word for linseed stand oil. The heating process modifies the oil's fats to reduce drying time. It also creates a slightly different coating that yellows a little less than raw oil. Tung oil is usually sold in the same state.

It's basically boiled linseed oil. By that I mean the medieval definition of boiled linseed oil in that it's actually heated up. Linseed oil was originally mixed with litharge (lead) to produce a harder finish and boiled to reduce drying time. This very dangerous process resulted in a product called boiled linseed.

This was replicated later by using harsh chemicals so that it didn't need the lead additive or to be heated since raw linseed oil's boiling point is just above it's flash point. This VOC emitting product is modern boiled linseed oil.

Later, they made a process to polymerize linseed (and other) oils by heating them in a vacuum. This avoids spontaneous combustion and results in a new "boiled linseed oil" that doesn't have VOCs or lead.

[linsen]

Great video, but a couple of observations. First, cutting boards aren't typically exposed to boiling water, so in my opinion, that test isn't really representative of how they are used. It's a great test for utensils, though. I'd like to see a test that looks at how resistant the different finishes are to cuts and scratches and how good they are at filling/repairing knife cuts and scratches when reapplied. I think the mineral oil + wax finishes (like Walrus Oil and others) might perform better on that kind of test. Second, I make my own mineral oil/lemon oil/beeswax finish, and I've finished many cutting and charcuterie boards with it (and some other things). I've never had any trouble with oil leaching out of the boards. You just have to spend some time thoroughly wiping and polishing the boards after they've been finished. In my opinion, mineral oil leaching out of cutting boards is just not nearly as big a problem as you said here.

[scottkludgedorsey]

If you want a polymerizing "drying" oil that is food-safe, consider black sesame oil. It takes a good long time to set, but it does set hard, makes your kitchen smell nice, and requires about the same maintenance as tung or linseed. It's delicious for stir-frying greens too. I do still prefer mineral oil which really isn't a finish per-se because it's not drying.... mineral oil definitely is the highest-maintenance of all the options (as you point out) and does require occasional reapplication but my experience with cutting boards is that the boards last longer than with drying oils.

[redrockcrf]

I can comment on Cherry. I made a cutting board of padouk and amercian cherry pver 40 year ago, finished with Mineral Oil. It nevers gets submerged in the sink, just wiped off with clean or sometimes soapy water depending, and other than a few knife marks, I have to say that it has served me exceptionally well.
These days, I would put bees wax on it to prevent it from being easily washed off by dish detergent as another commenter below has mentioned.

[obie]

well if i ever decide to put my cutting boards or furniture in boiling water for any length of time, i'll be sure to refer back to this video. otherwise this is pretty pointless to any larger discussion of finishing methods. maybe rename the video to something like "best finish for cooking utensils"

[robertkingsley]

The best finish on a wood product depends entirely on the use to which it will be put. Tung oil is great, I have used it for years. When applied properly and allowed enough time to completely polymerize, it produces a really hard durable finish. That's why it has been used on boats and floors for years. But it is a really poor choice for end-grain cutting boards precisely because of the hard surface it produces. End-grain cutting boards are known for their 'self-healing' property and the fact that they are easy on the edge of sharp knives. To get those properties you need a finish that does NOT harden - e.g. mineral oil. A hard finish like Tung oil will quickly dull knives, and the cutting board will become nicked and checked with use simply because the 'self-healing' properties are lost when a polymerizing finish firmly binds the wood fibers together. There is no 'best' finish. Think about what you want the finish to accomplish, then make an informed choice.

[joerandazzo]

Since tung oil is made from the nut of the tung tree, is there a risk of triggering a nut allergy reaction when used on items like cutting boards?

[richardhuffman]

Damn, this video is coming full circle for me; way back when you were first getting started with your youtube channel, you made a cutting board that my dad saw and we decided to try to make out own. We enjoyed it so much that we started experimenting and designing our own and ended up creating a bit of a business. Ten years later we've sold several hundred of our high-end end-grain chop boards.
It's amazing that you are all in on Jatoba; because figured out early on that it was the PERFECT wood for cutting boards (but sanding the end grain is insane!

We've always been just using mineral oil / parrafin mix, but mabye we will do some experimenting after watching this vid.

[rsc]

Tung oil is made from nuts, so you can unintentionally and unknowingly expose someone with nut allergies to a deadly toxin if you use on a cutting board. Might be okay for things like furniture or other wood products, but I don’t think I’d recommend using it for food.