When we were building our kitchen, one of the things I was not entirely certain about was a pull out chopping board. My parents had one in their kitchen, and all that I could remember is that it was ALWAYS dirty because their terrible children used it and never cleaned it. Ahem.
In preparation for one day owning a normal sized kitchen, I had on a pin board, a couple of pins of a pull out chopping board set over a pull out garbage unit, with a hole cut into the chopping board to easily dispose of waste.
I asked our cabinet maker if we could have something like the above. Not only did he say yes, but that he wanted to photograph our completed set up to show to other customers. I am nothing if not a trend setter, obviously.
They were able to squeeze in a shorter (2 inch tall, instead of 3 inch) drawer underneath the cutting board, and it became the perfect spot to store the knives and create a chopping / prepping zone.
Before we used the board for the first time, we put a couple of coats of Cutting Board Oil on it, just like we did for our other (nomadic) cutting board.
This works really well for chopping vegetables and peeling. I have a tendency to drop potatoes and mangoes if I’m just peeling directly over the trash. Since I’ve started peeling onto the board I’ve only dropped one mango (knock on wood, ha ha). It also works really well at Thanksgiving or any time there are multiple people prepping in the kitchen. I can set one person up with a large bowl for trash scraps with the nomadic chopping block, and another (usually me) with the pull out chopping block.
We like having the hole on the outside, versus the inside, mainly because that is the way the trash and recycling bins are set up. It would be easy enough to swap the trash and the recycling bins or not pull the trash cabinet out all the way – if someone were to prefer having the hole on the inside.
Overall, we are very pleased with how this turned out. Do you have any kitchen hacks or setups that seemed small, but ended up having major returns? I’d love to hear about (and potentially copy) them!
Sarahpedia 