Here’s How To Prevent Beet Stains From Ruining Your Cutting Board

I love adding beets to salads for extra color and sweetness — but I’m not too fond of the clean-up process. Dark beet juice leaves a purple stain on my wooden cutting boards that’s difficult to remove. Fortunately, I recently found a trick for keeping beets from staining my boards using a simple pantry staple: cooking spray.

How to Keep Beet Juice From Staining a Cutting Board

When it comes to cutting boards, I prefer wood for fruits and veggies and plastic for meat and fish. It’s an easy way for me to remember each board’s use and avoid cross-contamination.

A wooden cutting board‘s surface is more porous than one made from plastic. This means that after chopping a veggie like beets, the dark juices have already seeped into the wood’s pores — making it harder to scrub off. 

But you can avoid beet juice stains with a quick tip from Cook’s Illustrated, which calls for spraying the board with a light coat of nonstick cooking spray before use.

The cooking spray acts as a barrier that prevents the beets’ juices from seeping into the wood’s pores. Also, a cooking spray like PAM Original Cooking Spray (Buy from Walmart, $5.30) contains canola oil, which is flavorless and won’t affect the taste of your beets and other vegetables.

My Experience Testing This Hack

I first tried the cooking spray trick on one of my older and more inexpensive cutting boards that hadn’t yet been ruined by beet stains. I sprayed a layer on the board and gently wiped it across the surface to create an even coating.

Next, I diced two small cooked beets on the board. I immediately noticed that the cooking spray acted as a shield against the juices, preventing them from absorbing into the wood.

After dicing the beets, I put them in a bowl and washed the cutting board by hand. This step actually impressed me the most — the residual beet juice glided right off without leaving any stains behind.

With my second test, I used my shiny new 14-inch wood cutting board from Fifth & Cherry. This board (Buy from Fifth & Cherry, $299.99) is made from durable and responsibly sourced cherry wood.

I decided to break the board in by testing whether it could stand up to pesky beet stains — and with this cooking spray hack, it passed the test. The juices from the beets didn’t linger on the board’s surface or stain the material.

Now I can continue using the same board for chopping veggies or serving meats like juicy steak and tender chicken.

This handy hack will surely save me time and elbow grease when I want to add beets to a dish. Looking for another way to keep your cutting boards in great shape? Check out some handy cleaning tips in our story on how to care for a wooden cutting board.