Why We Chose Teak: The Cutting Board Material Guide Nobody Tells You

After 20+ years building custom kitchens out of my workshop in Redondo Beach, I've worked with every cutting board material on the market. Maple, walnut, cherry, white oak, red oak, bamboo, plastic, stone, glass — even titanium.

When my partner Matt and I started The True Board, we had to pick one. So I lined up every material I'd ever used on my workbench and tested them against the only thing that actually matters in a cutting board: does it stay safe to eat off of, for years?

Here's what 20 years of woodworking taught me about each one — and why we ultimately chose teak.

The default: why most cutting boards are maple (and why that's a problem)

Walk into any kitchen store and 90% of the cutting boards are maple. There's a reason: it's domestically abundant, easy to work with, and most of it comes from FSC-certified managed forests in North America.

But maple has a structural problem. It splits. If you ship a maple cutting board from California to Mobile, Alabama, or up to Bangor, Maine, it's going to acclimate to wildly different humidity levels. The wood reacts. And in my experience, maple is the most likely to crack under those climate swings.

We're a national brand. We can't tell customers in Florida and Washington they're getting different cutting boards. So maple was out.

Walnut and cherry: beautiful, not built for daily abuse

Walnut is gorgeous. The heartwood-sapwood color variation is unmatched, and it's domestically available out of California. But walnut is softer than ideal for daily cutting — your knife marks compound faster.

Cherry is the underrated entry. American cherry has a uniform color that deepens beautifully with oil. It's a great wood for a charcuterie board, but not the workhorse a cutting board needs to be.

Red oak and white oak both get used for cutting boards. The problem with red oak is its extreme hardness — it's tough on knife edges. Plus, in my opinion, the color skews too cold for a kitchen tool. You want warmth on a cutting board.

The bamboo trap: glues you don't want in your food

People love bamboo because it's "sustainable." Technically true — bamboo is fast-growing, FSC-certified across most sources, and you can find boards under $30.

Here's the catch: bamboo is incredibly fibrous. To bond bamboo strips into a usable board, manufacturers use a lot of glue, resins, and epoxies. In cheaper bamboo boards, that glue is cancer-causing.

If you go bamboo, you have to verify the glue source — and most consumers don't know to ask. Bamboo is also too hard on knife edges and limited in thickness. We ruled it out.

Plastic: the microplastic problem nobody talks about

Plastic cutting boards are cheap, dishwasher-safe, and recommended by half the cooking shows on TV. They're also the worst thing in your kitchen.

Every time you cut on a plastic board, you're shaving microscopic plastic particles into your food. Those microplastics end up in your stomach. The research is clear: this is cancer-causing.

On top of that, plastic boards harbor bacteria — even after dishwashing. The knife grooves create channels that bacteria settles into and survives.

If you take one thing from this post: throw out your plastic cutting board.

Stone, glass, titanium: the knife killers

Every few years, someone reinvents the cutting board out of stone, glass, or titanium. They all market the same way: easy to clean, modern aesthetic, won't harbor bacteria.

They all share one fatal flaw: they destroy your knife edge.

A good kitchen knife needs sharpening every few weeks of regular use. If you're cutting on stone or glass or titanium, you'll be sharpening every few days. The blade hits an unforgiving surface and rolls or chips with every cut.

I won't put my good knives on those boards. Neither should you.

Why teak won

So I came back to wood. And after working with Burmese teak years ago on furniture projects, I knew teak had something unique.

But Burma (now Myanmar) has some of the most beautiful old-growth teak forests on Earth, and we don't want to be part of cutting those down. So that ruled out traditional Burmese teak — for ethical reasons, not quality ones.

Today, the teak we use comes from Costa Rica plantations. It's FSC-certified, plantation-grown, farm-raised, and tightly controlled. The forestry science has caught up: new-growth plantation teak retains nearly all the properties of old-growth — including the one that matters most.

That property: teak has a natural oil in the wood that bacteria literally cannot live on.

Most wood is antimicrobial by nature — bacteria will die on it eventually. But "eventually" means about four minutes on maple, walnut, or oak. On teak? The natural oil means bacteria won't live on it at all.

That single fact made the decision. We chose teak.

What 5 returns out of a few hundred taught us

We've sold a few hundred True Boards now. Five came back.

• One was run over by a car. We saw the tire mark on the box.
• My nephew (a really big guy) tried to cut a frozen chicken in half using his body weight and broke the board. I told him to glue it and clamp it. Three years later, still in his kitchen.
• Three others had minor cracks from shipping or initial humidity acclimation.

Five out of a few hundred. About a 1-2% return rate, mostly preventable. I'll take that.

What we got right

Beyond the bacteria science, the choices that compound:

• FSC certified, Costa Rica plantation teak — no old-growth deforestation
• Stave width of just under 2" — color variation without visual chaos
• Food-grade Titebond III glue joints — FDA-approved, almost never fail
• Heartwood-to-sapwood mix — consistent warmth, never jarring

The cutting board your kitchen actually deserves.