OXO Good Grips Utility Cutting Board Is Solidly Reliable

We purchased the OXO Good Grips Utility Cutting Board so our reviewer could put it to the test in her kitchen. Keep reading for our full product review.

If you have a kitchen, you need a cutting board. Cutting boards, like this OXO Good Grips Utility Cutting Board, are designed to protect your knives from hard surfaces that dull the blade prematurely while also keeping the mess off your counter. This board does all that, with little fuss or fanfare, and with subtle extras that you might only appreciate after using the board for a while. Here’s how we determined this product is great for apples to zucchini and everything in between.

Size: Mid-sized, all-purpose

While OXO’s Utility Cutting Board would be too small for carving a turkey, it handles most other kitchen uses with grace. It’s 10.5 x 14.5 inches, but you might as well double that since it can be used on both sides. If this board were larger, it would be more difficult to store, and if it was smaller, it would be much less useful. As Goldilocks would say, “It’s juuuust right.” The size also means it fits into a standard 11 x 16 baking sheet for those times when you want to contain an inevitable mess by doing your cutting inside a pan.

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Material: Food-safe plastic

Polypropylene is probably the safest plastic you can find for food use, which makes it perfect for cutting boards. It’s heat-safe to above the boiling point, so you don’t have to worry about melting it in normal use, but you shouldn’t use it as a trivet for hot cooking pots. We often slide pizzas onto the board straight from the oven with no issues. The board is impervious to most chemicals, so it won’t react to the acid in tomatoes or the detergents used in your dishwasher. It basically just sits there, looking the same, day after day. Polypropylene is also very nonstick, to the point where most glues won’t adhere to it, so that means your food won’t stick, either.

Design: Utilitarian and functional

This isn’t the prettiest cutting board you’ll find (it’s stark white with black hand grips on two sides), but it’s made to be used. Little nubby feet elevate it off the counter and keep it from sliding, no matter which side you use. Flip the board over, and you’ll have a perfectly clean surface that hadn’t been resting on your counter.

One side of the board is perfectly flat, which is ideal when chopping or slicing small foods and then scraping them into a bowl or pot. The other side has a juice groove around the edge that can catch drippings when you’re slicing tomatoes or other juicy foods. The groove isn’t super deep, so you can still make a mess if your roast hasn’t rested long enough, but it’s sufficient most of the time. The black side grips give you something non-slip to hold onto, but they’re small enough that they don’t impact the cutting area. We also found that the design of the grips made it easy to lift the board off the counter without pawing at it or needing to slide it over the edge of the counter.

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Maintenance: Almost effortless

Most of the time, we tossed this cutting board into the dishwasher. But when we planned on using it again right away, we simply swiped with a soapy sponge, and it cleaned easily. If you don’t have a dishwasher and are worried about cross-contamination after cutting something like chicken, just rinse the board with boiling water.

Durability: Years of use

While cutting boards are meant to be a little soft to protect knife blades, this one is strong enough to last. We’d been using this same board for over a year before receiving a brand new one to test, and our old one was still our first choice most of the time. While it shows a few knife marks if you look closely, it hasn’t discolored at all, and it still has many good years left before it will need to be retired.

Price: Great value

While this isn’t the cheapest cutting board you’ll encounter, at under $20, it’s certainly affordable. When you take into consideration that this board will last for years, the price seems even more reasonable—and with the extra features, you’ll forget the few dollars you might save on a bargain board.

Competition: The best all-purpose board you’ll find

A slightly more specialized board, you might consider the OXO Good Grips Chop and Pour Cutting Board as either a competitor or a companion. The size and price are about the same, and the material is identical, but this one has a special corner that’s designed to make it easy to nudge small bits of food off the board and into a pot or bowl. This would be the board to choose if you’re often slicing vegetables for soups, making chopped salads, or cutting fruits for pie. However, it’s not a two-sided board, and it doesn’t have a groove for catching juices, so it’s definitely not an all-purpose board.

The Farberware Nonslip Plastic Cutting Board is a no-frills, less expensive cutting board. The hole on one end serves as a handle, but it also reduces the usable cutting area. This is a perfectly flat board with no groove for catching juices, but it can be used on both sides. Because of that perfect flatness, it can be a little harder to pick up if your hands are wet or greasy, so you might need to slide an edge off the counter to get a good grip on it.

Want to take a look at some other options? See our guide to the best cutting boards.