How do you quickly clean wooden spoons from the kitchen? Bioengineering warns of TikTok hack | to eat

You have undoubtedly noticed this yourself if you use wooden spoons in the kitchen: after a while, your wooden kitchen equipment no longer looks so fresh. For example, it starts to discolor or has scratches. Multiple tips for cleaning it up appear on TikTok and Instagram.

One of them is quite striking: If you let spoons boil for 15 minutes in a pot of hot water, they come out completely clean again. This is controversial, because the water looks very dirty after 15 minutes. This dirty water raises mixed reactions and questions. Some are glad they didn’t buy wooden spoons, spoons or cutting boards. “You have broth right away,” someone laughs in the video. “After that, coat it well with oil,” advises another user. Others roll their eyes: “You’ll break your spoons with this hot water,” it seems. But what about really?

“Wood absorbs materials,” explains Bruno de Meulinier. He is a professor at Ghent University and an expert in chemical food safety. “If you stir the tomato sauce with a wooden spoon, the wood of that spoon will absorb small amounts of, say, the substance lycopene — responsible for the red color of tomatoes.”

When you boil old spatulas or spatulas as in hack cleaning, substances will be released from even the most surface micrometers of the wood. This may sound amazing, but it is a logical phenomenon. This has to do with the nutrients, but it also has to do with the oil or fat that the wood absorbs. In addition, wood components will be released in lesser amounts the longer the spoon is used and washed more often.”

“As long as the wooden spoon from your kitchen does not come into contact with inedible objects, there is no food safety risk,” the expert assures. “Microbiologically, nothing can happen if you keep the spoon somewhere dry. Bacteria can eat food ingredients, but they need water to survive. Because wood dries quickly, they don’t stand a chance.”

According to the expert, wood quality plays a role in how quickly kitchen utensils wear out, but not in how food safe they are. “It can only go wrong when adding synthetic resin to glue the wood fibers together. Some manufacturers in China do not allow the resin in the bamboo dinnerware to harden enough, so that toxic particles are released when the eating utensils are used. The EU has strict import rules So, don’t panic.”

The best wood for kitchen utensils is beech. This type of wood is much purer than, for example, resin-rich coniferous wood. In addition, the greater the porosity of the wood, the more absorbent it is. With beech wood, the wood fibers are close together. As a result, beech wood is hard, heavy, and less likely to absorb certain components. If you cut with your knife in a plank of softwood, you will see a scratch much faster than in a plank of beech. So the quality is lower, which means that the wood will wear out faster, but it will still be safe in terms of food.

“It’s perfectly healthy to rinse a wooden spoon with cold water after use. On the other hand, don’t put wood in the dishwasher. That’s how your materials break. Advice on social media for cooking kitchen utensils made of wood doesn’t hold water at all.” Wood can’t stand that and decomposes effectively.”

If your wooden board, spatula, or spatula seems too dry, has turned pale, or has begun to peel or crack, it’s best to rub it with oil. “This is a natural way to protect the wood from drying out. Otherwise, the wood fibers will shrink and crack, and your materials will break. How often you need to rub the wood depends on how often you use it.”

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