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J.K. Adams

J.K. Adams

1430 Route 30,
Dorset, VT

Part of: Vermont 08 – Cheese & Tasty Things Tour

After reading all of the recent posts it may seem like all that Vermont has is cheese. This is completely untrue. They actually have two things–the other is maple syrup. To make lots of maple syrup you need lots of maple trees, which incidentally also make really nice cutting boards.

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J.K. Adams is a kick ass cutting board manufacturer located in Dorset, Vermont. Dorset is a bit in the middle of no where but it is worth the drive because these guys are the real deal. You can buy their cutting boards in Williams Sonoma and Crate & Barrel. They also have a great kitchen store at their factory. We…ok, really me…went a little nuts there. I ended up buying two end grain butcher blocks and a great laser etched serving tray.

The story behind the J.K Adams logo is an interesting one. Back in Colonial times, foresters marked the best trees with an arrow, and those trees were used to make ships for the British royal fleet. J.K. Adams uses the arrow logo to symbolize that they, too, use the best wood for their products.

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End grain cutting boards are the best kind you can get and will last forever. In normal wooden cutting boards the grain of the wood is perpendicular to the blade of the knife. As you cut things, you also make cuts in the wood. With end grain boards, the wood grain runs parralel to the blade of the knife. Instead of cutting the wood, the knife blade pushes the wood fibers aside. This helps the board last longer. Instead of just having a board of wood lying flat, shorts piece of wood are stacked on end and glued together to form a cutting board. I think I have done a horrible job of explaining this, hopefully the pictures help. The take away is that end grain cutting boards are big honking boards that makes cutting things up fun…and J.K. Adams makes a damn fine board.

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The “smaller” board is maple. They stopped making the grain board using maple and have switched to cherry. The cherry wood gives the block more variety in tone, which gives the boards an interesting pattern. The larger board is cherry. We got a great price on the maple one though since it was the last of the old stock.

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So besides the 30 lbs of butcher block we bought, we also got a really cool laser etched serving board. They have a number of different designs, all of which look pretty awesome.

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One of the cool things about their Kitchen Store is an observation deck where you can watching them making all of the different products. Unfortunately when we visited the production lines weren’t running.

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