You want to cut up your favorite Honeycrisp apple for breakfast, but when pulling out the cutting board, you’re bombarded with the pungent odor of garlic, an ingredient you minced for the shrimp and eggplant stir fry you made the night before. While apple and garlic might taste great in roasted butternut squash soup, it wasn’t what you had in mind that morning. Rather than fouling the aroma of your expensive Honeycrisp apple with garlic, use baking soda to quickly and easily deodorize your cutting board.
Since 1972, Arm & Hammer’s successful marketing campaign has encouraged millions of Americans to pop open a box of their baking soda into the fridge to help eliminate odors. As you may remember from your high school chemistry class, acids can be neutralized by bases. Since bad smells in the kitchen are often caused by volatile fatty acids, alkaline baking soda — a base — is a safe, odor-ridding solution. Arm & Hammer’s product (or any baking soda) is equally effective in making your cutting board odor free. All it takes is water, baking soda, and a little bit of time.
The baking soda solution
There are a few slightly different ways to use baking soda to eliminate odors on your cutting board, and all methods will work regardless of whether your board is made out of wood or plastic. The first method suggests making a paste from baking soda and water in a 3:1 ratio, spreading the mixture across the surface, scrubbing it with a sponge or cloth, and then rinsing to remove the paste. Another method advises sprinkling a couple of tablespoons of baking soda over a wet cutting board, and letting it sit for a few minutes before washing with soap and water.
Alternatively, you can also use half a lemon to scrub the baking soda if you want to deodorize, sanitize, and remove stains from a wooden cutting board in particular. This method will leave a lemony scent on your board, and though it’s a generally pleasant fragrance, it might not be an odor you want on everything you chop.
