What chopping board do professional chefs use?

When you enter a professional chef’s Home Kitchen, the one tool you will inevitably notice is the chopping board. While a professional kitchen may present you with a plastic chopping board, the home kitchen of professional chefs says a completely different story. What chopping boards do professional chefs use at home? Is it plastic for hygiene? Steel for durability or the good old wood?

Let’s dive into India’s most celebrated chefs to find out what chopping boards they use and why wooden chopping boards are increasingly becoming the gold standards.

Why Wooden chopping boards are the top choice for chefs?

Before we go into the list of top chefs and the boards they use, let’s understand why the wooden chopping boards are the go-to choice for professional chefs at home.

1. Gentle on knives: Some knives are expensive and professional chefs use some of the best knives. For instance, Chef Ranveer Brar boasts a knife worth 100,000. It’s not uncommon to see chefs use expensive knives. But these knives need a surface which is less abrasive to keep them sharp for longer. Wooden chopping boards are the best choice for professional chefs because they are soft on the knives yet firm.
2. Natural antibacterial properties: Wood like teak, tamarind, and neem are known for their antibacterial properties. The natural oil in teak and wood in general are known to kill the bacteria in seconds. This makes teak wood chopping boards the best option for cutting meat and vegetables. In general, wooden boards are proven to be more hygienic than their counterparts.
3. Durability: Wood is more durable than plastic and is known to last decades if cared for well. Unlike plastic, wood is self-healing. The knife grooves in plastic are known to harbour bacteria while wood, being self-healing, closes the knife grooves, especially in end grain boards.
4. Stability: Wooden boards are more sturdy and can hold their place well. Unlike cheap plastic boards which slide all over the counter, wooden boards are excellent to keep in place and will not move around while chopping food.
5. Aesthetic appeal: Nothing beats the natural look of wood. Let’s face it. A good teak wood or the rich grains of the mango wood sits just right in any kitchen. There is no plastic board, steel cutting board or bamboo that can beat the aesthetics of a good wooden board. Wood just looks amazing in every home kitchen.

Professional chefs and their wooden chopping boards

Here are some of the top Indian chefs and the wooden chopping boards that adorn their kitchen.

Chef Ranveer Brar

Ranveer Brar’s kitchen is often seen featuring a single wood chopping board of large and small sizes. The wood appears to be teak or acacia. The single-piece thick hardwood board looks chunky and robust. A solid slab rather than glued strips made of high-end wood featuring a rich natural warm finish with smooth grains and a rich gold patina, a hallmark of teak or acacia, adds the extra charm not only to his food presentation and preparation but also to his kitchen. Rightly sized based on what he is cooking, there is a small to medium-sized board and also a large board made from a single block of wood.

The chopping board is an edge grain board with some of the best features including hygiene, durability, and a heavy smooth surface. Gentle on the knives and beautiful, the boards used by Ranveer Brar are simply exquisite.

Chef Pankaj Bhadouria

Chef Pankaj Bhadouria is a favourite among many home chefs for her bits of information which can make cooking a lot easier. Some of her tips also include how to maintain your chopping boards. She is known to use acacia chopping boards and mango wood chopping boards in various videos of hers. With a great collection of chopping boards, Pankaj Bhadouria’s boards are mostly between small and medium-sized in her videos. They are just perfect for home chefs. Not too large or clunky, these boards are easy to manage, knife-friendly and add beauty to the kitchen and also the food prepared.

Her smaller chopping boards are simple and without any design features. Just a plain board which is beautiful as it is. With no design features, the board is clearly in its best shape for a longer time. It also enhances the beauty of the wood rather than human creativity.

Chef Kunal Kapur

Chef Kunal Kapur is not just a chef but also one of the renowned restaurateurs with restaurants in India, but also Abu Dhabi and Dubai. His chain of restaurants is now available through franchise adding up in various locations. His restaurant “Pincode” aims at preserving traditional recipes with modern culinary techniques. He aims to evoke nostalgia by celebrating traditional flavours.

His home cooking series features mostly bamboo chopping boards for chopping vegetables and a light wooden block to present food. The block used to present food is either mango wood or maple. The wood has light grains and is perfectly suited for his kitchen which has a bright, clean and minimalist design.

The bamboo chopping board is approximately 2 cm in height and a medium 12 X 18 inch length and width. Perfect for chopping vegetables, the board is designed for comfort rather than presentation. Unlike most chefs, Chef Kunal Kapur prefers a bamboo wooden chopping board to hardwood.

Chef Vikas Khanna

Chef Vikas Khanna is a renowned Michelin star chef and a restaurateur. One of the best Indian chefs, Vikas Khanna is a brand ambassador for Bergner India, a leading kitchenware and cookware company. His videos feature a range of wooden cutting boards, mostly teak and acacia. It’s rare to see Chef Vikas cook as his tasks are beyond the kitchen activities, but when he does, he is a maestro.

His kitchen seems like an organized mess which only he can decipher. The kitchen tools he uses, from knives to skillets and the chopping board are all top-of-the-line, expensive and the best in terms of quality. Some of the best brands adorn his kitchen, not because they are the best brands, but because they are top in line in terms of quality.

The chopping boards used by Chef Vikas are thick, durable and made from teak. They are sufficiently sized for a commercial kitchen and large food preps, often for more than 6-7 guests.

Like most chefs, Chef Vikas uses a wide range of chopping boards based on what is required to cut. The above video features a small chopping board to cut dry fruits, herbs and condiments.

Chef Saransh Goila

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Chef Saransh, known for his signature dish, the Goila Butter Chicken, works on a cloud kitchen model catering across India and parts of the UK. While butter chicken is the star attraction, Chef Saransh offers a wide range of Indian dishes like Naan Bombs, Butter Paneer, Paneer Tikka, Chicken Tikka and Mutton. With a focus on contemporary Indian food, his cooking style is more traditional, preserving Indian cooking techniques but with a modern twist to appeal to younger audiences.

Like most professional chefs, Chef Saransh is seen sporting wooden chopping boards made from acacia. The boards vary in size depending on the cooking needs.

Chef Sanjeev Kapoor

Everyone knows Sanjeev Kapoor. A celebrity chef, Sanjeev Kapoor is a name every home chef has heard of and is synonymous with cooking in India. May it be vegan, vegetarian or meat, Sanjeev Kapoor’s cooking techniques have inspired home cooks for years in India. Featured in some of the best shows, the youngest executive chef of Centaur Hotel Mumbai and an ardent traveller who has worked all around the world, Sanjeev Kapoor is known for his achievements. He is also on board the international culinary panel for Singapore Airlines. An author of several books, a Padma Shri awardee and ranked 31 in the most trusted persons by Reader’s Digest, and a judge for MasterChef India.

Sanjeev Kapoor’s cooking has inspired chefs like Ranveer Brar, Harpal Solanki, Nisha Madhulika and many new chefs in today’s India. His choices in kitchen accessories too are followed by a huge fan base. One of the few accessories that is featured on Sanjeev Kapoor’s videos is the heavy, wooden block on the kitchen counter. Made from hardwood, the chopping block is made from a single piece of hardwood like teak. The wooden board is perfect for chopping both meat and vegetables. Not the best option for home cooks with limited space, but an excellent choice for people with a big counter surface and a dedicated chopping area, this simple design board is a marvel in wood.

Chef Madhur Jaffrey

Chef Tarla Dalal

Chef Shipra Khanna

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Chef Anjum Anand

FAQ

What kind of cutting boards do professional chefs use?
Professional chefs use multiple cutting boards. In a commercial kitchen, a plastic board is more common, but at homes, chefs prefer an end grain wooden chopping board. This is because of the durability, aesthetics, and knife friendliness. Chefs use expensive knives and they need to be kept sharp for longer. Dulling the knife faster means sharpening them more often and reducing the age of the knife. An end grain cutting board keeps the edges of the knife sharper for longer and this is an advantage of end grain cutting boards compared to edge grain boards and other material.

What chopping board does Gordon Ramsay use?
Gordon Ramsay uses a Boos Block made from maple. The 2-inch edge grain board is prominently displayed in many of his cooking videos. He also uses a thinner edge grain board for cutting vegetables.

What cutting board does MasterChef use?
MasterChef chopping boards are mostly bamboo boards as the show requires to maintain its aesthetics. They are changed for every show and they are custom created to the requirements of the show itself. Wooden boards are more expensive and not sustainable to be replaced so often.

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