Many trusted sources declare that to effectively clean a surface or item it needs to be cleaned with soap and water. To fully understand why soap is so important to the cleaning process we need to understand what soap is, how it works, and finally, why EndGrain Cutting Block Soap is effective at removing dirt and all the microbes that live in dirt from the surface of EndGrain Cutting Boards.
What is soap?
Soap is made from a salt that is derived from vegetable or animal fats that is then combined with an alkaline metal solution. Each substance on its own doesn’t remove soil, fats, and the microbes that live in them but together they create a powerful solution that is effective at loosening the dirt and making it easier to remove from a surface.
How Soap Works
To understand how soap works we need to first understand why water and oil don’t mix. First, molecules are one of two types: polar or non-polar. Polar molecules love water and will happily mix with it (like sugar). Whereas non-polar molecules won’t mix with water (like oil). Therefore it’s very easy to wipe up a little spilled sugar in the kitchen with a damp rag, whereas something like butter cannot be cleaned up with water alone (and if you’ve tried (like so many of us) you know that it tends to just become a thinner, larger smudge of butter).
This is where soap comes into play. Soap molecules are amphipathic, which means they have both polar and non-polar properties. By being amphipathic, soap molecules can dissolve most types of molecules, like grease and oil, that don’t easily dissolve with water alone. Those molecules can now be removed from a surface with water. It not only works by making molecules easier to remove from a surface, but we also tend to wash an item longer (to remove all the soap). By washing an item longer, there’s more time to remove all the dirt that holds microbes from an item’s surface.
EndGrain Cutting Block Soap
Our soap uses a combination of olive oil, coconut oil, sunflower oil, and potassium hydroxide (along with a few other ingredients to give a pleasant aroma and make it a little gentler on skin) to create an incredibly effective cleaning agent. Since our soap uses potassium hydroxide, it is a highly alkaline detergent. What does that mean? It means that it is highly effective at removing protein-based grime (like meat juices), fat-based grime (like juice from chicken skin or pork belly), and starches associated with proteins or fats (like buttery biscuits). Simply washing your wood cutting board with our EndGrain Cutting Block Soap will effectively remove those microbes that cause food borne illnesses.
Soap and water have been and always will be an effective combo for removing dirt, grime, and all the microbes that love to live in them. Be assured that using EndGrain Cutting Block Soap is an effective way to remove fats, oils, juices, and all the microbes that live in those substances from the surface of an EndGrain Cutting Board.
