The short version

• Wash it right after you use it, with warm water and a drop of dish soap. Never soak it, never put it in the dishwasher.
• Dry it standing up so both sides get air.
• Oil it when the wood starts looking pale. That's about once a month if you use it daily.
• Stick to food-grade mineral oil, board cream, or fractionated coconut oil. Olive and vegetable oil go rancid inside the wood.
• Dried-out or scratched board? A light sanding and a good oiling brings it right back.

Teak earned its reputation on boat decks, not butcher blocks. The stuff that lets it live outside for decades (dense grain, lots of natural oil, even a bit of silica in the wood itself) is exactly what makes it one of the easiest woods to keep in a kitchen. But easy isn't the same as zero effort. Wash a teak board carelessly and never oil it, and it'll dry out, fade, and eventually crack like any other wood.

So here's the whole routine, honestly: two minutes after each use, ten minutes a month, and a rescue trick you'll probably never need.

Why teak asks less of you than other woods

Most cutting board woods, like maple, walnut, and cherry, depend almost entirely on the oil you rub into them to keep water out. Teak shows up with its own supply. There's natural oil and rubber in the grain that slows down moisture from day one. That's why a teak board forgives the occasional lapse in oiling that would leave a maple board parched and gray.

What that means in practice: you'll oil a teak board less often. Not never. It still loses oil to washing, air, and acidic food. Just more slowly.

Washing: the two-minute routine

After each use:

• Rinse it right away with warm water and a drop of mild dish soap. A sponge or cloth is all you need. No steel wool, no scouring pads.
• Never soak it. Standing water is the one thing no wooden board survives gracefully. Wash, rinse, done.
• Dry it standing up. Towel it off, then let it finish air-drying upright so both faces get air. A board left flat on a damp counter dries unevenly, and uneven drying is what warps wood. Honestly, this is the entire reason a board stand exists: air on both sides, every time, without you thinking about it.
• Never the dishwasher. Heat plus a long soak will kill any wooden board, teak included. One cycle can crack a board that would otherwise last decades.

Need a deeper clean after raw meat or something smelly like garlic or onion? Sprinkle coarse salt over the surface, scrub it with the cut side of half a lemon, rinse, and dry it upright. A wipe of white vinegar (diluted about 1 part vinegar to 4 parts water) also sanitizes without hurting the wood.

Oiling: when and how

You might've heard the old woodworker's rule: once a day for a week, once a week for a month, once a month for life. That was written for thirstier woods than teak. With teak, just watch the wood instead of the calendar:

• When the surface looks pale, dry, or a little gray instead of warm and golden, it's time.
• With regular use, that works out to roughly once a month. A board you use daily and wash often might want it a bit sooner. A serving board can go months.
• End-grain boards drink more. A board like The Block has the ends of the wood fibers facing up. That's what makes it so gentle on knives, and it also means it soaks up oil faster than a face-grain board. Give end grain a generous first coat and let it take what it wants.

The method is simple. Make sure the board is clean and fully dry. Pour a small pool of oil on the surface and spread it with a clean cloth, going with the grain. Do the top, the bottom, and the edges. Always all the faces, because oiling one side only invites uneven moisture, and that's how boards warp. Let it soak in for a few hours or overnight, then buff off whatever the wood didn't take. That's it.

Which oil, and which to never use

Use:

• Food-grade mineral oil. The standard for a reason: it's inert, it never spoils, and it's cheap.
• Board cream (mineral oil blended with beeswax). Our own boards ship finished this way. The wax leaves a soft film that sheds water, which suits teak especially well.
• Fractionated coconut oil. A plant-based option that, unlike the coconut oil in your pantry, stays liquid and doesn't go rancid.

Never:

• Olive, vegetable, sunflower, or regular coconut oil. These are food oils, and food oils spoil. They soak into the wood, oxidize, and turn rancid. You end up with a sticky surface and a smell that's very hard to get back out.
• Furniture polish or "teak oil" sold for outdoor furniture. A lot of those contain solvents and additives that have no business near food. If the label doesn't say food-safe, it isn't.

Reviving a tired board

A board that's been neglected (dried out, rough, marked up) is almost always recoverable:

1. Clean it and let it dry completely. Give it a full day.
2. Sand it lightly with fine sandpaper. 220 grit is enough for dryness and shallow marks. If the surface is genuinely rough, start at 120 and finish at 220. Sand with the grain on face-grain boards; on end grain, a light circular pass is fine.
3. Wipe away every bit of dust, then oil it heavily. Several coats, letting each soak in, until the wood stops drinking.

The board that comes out will look remarkably close to the day it arrived. That's the quiet superpower of solid wood: it's one of the few things in a kitchen you can genuinely reset to new. It's why a well-made board is a decades-long possession, not something you replace.

Cared for this way, teak doesn't just hold up. It gets better, darkening a little and picking up the kind of character only years of real use produce. Every piece in our teak collection is finished food-safe and ready for this routine from day one.