Kou Cutting Boards

October 2025
Kou

My wife and I had been discussing getting rid of our plastic cutting boards to reduce the chance of introducing even more microplastics than already exist in the food chain into our diet via our own kitchen. Plus, wood cutting boards can have antibacterial properties depending on the wood, and they've been in healthy kitchens for centuries.

Like any man with a workshop, I have several offcuts of wood in my house. I chose kou (Cordia subcordata), an indigenous Hawaiian wood that was also brought as a canoe crop to the islands by the kupuna. Kou is known to not impart any flavor to food prepared on it, making it a popular choice for umeke, papa kuʻiʻai and utensils. I had enough kou to make one larger longish cutting board, and two smaller ones—sometimes you just need to cut a lemon or piece of cheese and don't want to use a big board! I oiled them up with a food-safe sealing wax, and took them straight to the kitchen.

For the inaugural meal, we went hyper-local. The lemon and the green onions in the second photo both came from my own garden, and the taʻape (bluestripe snapper, an invasive species—eat the invasives!) were caught the day before by local fishermen.