Fix Warped Wooden Cutting Board The Easy (or Lazy?) Way

Sometimes I’m an idiot. Like this time for example, when I left the nice little wooden cutting board we use for charcuterie or cheeses in the sink, soaking wet, and at that placed a pot on top of it. Yep, it warped. Can’t imagine why.

In order to stay in the good graces of my lady companion, I now had to figure out how to fix it. Sure, I could use an iron like some methods show you to, but that seems like a lot of work and I also didn’t want to heat up the joints in case it caused some kind of issue with how the board is glued together. It’s old, and you never know. I didn’t want to have to try and glue warped cutting board pieces together if something went wrong.

It warped one way because it stayed soaked and had weight on it, so it obviously will react to that, I thought with a stroke of instant genius! So, I figured hair of the dog would be the easiest way.

What you’ll need to fix it:

• Warped cutting board. If you don’t have one, skip straight to step titled “drink wine.”
• Cooking sheet or other water-tight container large enough for the warped cutting board.
• Something big and heavy. I used one of those fancy French Le Creuset cookware dutch ovens. At least it’s being used for something.

How to fix it:

I’ll break this into steps with pictures for the important steps below (because no one really should need a picture of how to drain water, and because I was using both hands then and it wouldn’t have worked anyway) and it’s really pretty simple.

Step 1:

Place your warped cutting board face down (by face down, I mean so that when you’re looking at the board from the side there’s a gap between the center and the edges on the bottom side of the board) into a baking sheet or some other tray that will hold water and is large enough for the cutting board.

Step 2:

Place large, heavy item onto the board in such a way that it will press down on the raised portion of the board, and preferably contact the edges of the board as well so it will provide even pressure across the board when it is straightening and won’t warp in the other direction instead of flattening out.

Step 3:

Soak the cutting board in water as much as you can. (I ran water from the tap on it until it was nice and wet first.) Then fill the tray with water, preferably to the top of the cutting board. If your tray isn’t deep enough, then fill to the level that you can. You might have to flip the board after a little while. I let mine soak overnight because that’s just what worked easily once I found out it was warped.

Step 4:

Once the board has straightened, drain the water out of the tray You can take everything off for a minute if it’s easier to drain that way since it shouldn’t spring back instantly. If you took it apart, then assemble again in the same direction.

Step 5:

Leave the board to dry under the heavy item in the tray.

Step 6:

Drink wine. If this is in the morning when you’ve just emptied the tray you might want to wait till later so you don’t develop a problem. Or if you’re reading ahead you can do what I did and make this “step 3b” while waiting for the board to straighten.

Tadaaaa! Fixed (once warped) wooden cutting board.

Here’s what we ended up with. And never once did I have to worry about burning my fingers on the iron, nor touching it and risking my lady friend knowing I have any idea how to use it, because you know that would end badly.