The Best Way to Air-Dry Knives? A Baby Bottle Drying Rack

With nearly a decade of motherhood under my belt, I have some pretty strong opinions about products targeted to new parents. For example, a baby food maker is pure clutter if you already have an immersion blender or small food processor; diaper bags are a total racket; and Aquaphor Baby is just overpriced Aquaphor. But there’s one baby-specific product every home cook should own whether they have kids in the house or not: the Boon Patch Drying Rack.

Intended as a stand-alone sanitary space for air-drying all the various bottle parts associated with feeding an infant, this little sliver of plastic grass also happens to be the best knif-drying rack ever—something I discovered by accident after my kids stopped using bottles and sippy cups a couple of years ago.

In an ideal world I’d towel-dry my knives and immediately put them away, but Covid-era life with two young children wasn’t exactly an ideal world. So my knives got left to dry the old-fashioned way—just like the rest of the hand-wash-only dishes I can’t bring myself to put in the dishwasher no matter how badly I want to.

Because knives are typically the last thing I wash, I used to precariously position them on my dish rack or the microfiber mat I kept underneath it. It wasn’t the best or safest setup, and the blades often bumped up against each other, which led to consistently dull knives.

The Patch solves all of those problems. As it happens, plastic grass works a lot like those knife blocks with bristles instead of slots. It holds knives of all shapes and sizes securely in place without dulling the blades, and because the grass lifts in and out of the base, it’s very easy to clean.

If you’re short on counter space—or you don’t want a pop of bright green on your counter at all times—you can tuck this compact drying rack in a cabinet or drawer when you’re not using it. Conversely, you might consider a slightly larger yard because Boon’s BPA-free plastic grass is also perfect for drying stemware and other delicate glasses. If you need a bigger lot, you can choose from more subtle colors like gray, white, and sage green.