I’ve been spending money on Boos board cream and “mystery oil” for the better part of a decade now (since buying my good cutting board) and never thought twice about it. It wasn’t until I was refinishing my board’s face with an orbital sander that...
I’ve been spending money on Boos board cream and “mystery oil” for the better part of a decade now (since buying my good cutting board) and never thought twice about it. It wasn’t until I was refinishing my board’s face with an orbital sander that I thought “I wonder what’s in that stuff, anyway”. Turns out that it’s basically just food grade mineral oil and beeswax, at least for the board cream. I’m already familiar with mineral oil since I’ve used it when the board starts looking dry and I don’t have any mystery oil on hand, but according to several resources online Boos uses a 5:1 ratio of mineral oil to beeswax. I went to the store to buy a few bottles of USP mineral oil ($2 each) and a 17oz glass lock jar ($4.50), then went on Amazon to buy a pound of “100% pure, unbleached” beeswax ($10). I put a pot of boiling water on the stove, then filled up a small metal mixing bowl with 250 g of oil and 50 g of beeswax. Then waited for it to heat up, put the metal bowl in the bigger pot (double boiler), stirred, and poured it into the glass jar, where it is currently cooling. If my math is mathing, the next time I make it, I will have come out ahead from a cost perspective. And at that point I’ll still have enough wax left over to do it a dozen+ more times for only the cost of mineral oil or expensive. It was about as easy as it gets, and only took five minutes from start to finish once the water got boil boiling. Turns out that caring for your cutting board doesn’t have to be terribly difficult. Next up is going to be DIY “mystery oil”. Which apparently is the same basic thing, but with a different ratio, and a little bit of carnauba wax. https://imgur.com/a/yNEvajI submitted by /u/diverareyouokay [link] [comments]
