You know… like garlic or ginger or very hot peppers that you may not want to swipe off with your bare hands. Whenever I chop these stickier things, they require being wiped off the knife and back onto the chopping board again.
I’ve been using a cheap wooden chopstick for this purpose, but I was curious what other peeps do.
I have been mostly using my fingers and hand.
That being said, if a tool is needed, I do use this bamboo brush to remove grater foods
Amazon.com: Kotobuki Japanese Mortar Bamboo Brush For Grater: Home & Kitchen
For almost everything except when I’m cutting a lot of very hot peppers, I just use my fingers. For the peppers, I wear a nitrile glove on my off-hand, even though I hate wearing gloves in the kitchen. I also wash my hands a lot when I’m cooking. A LOT.
Yeah, I don’t mess around with peppers anymore after having had an allergic reaction (or maybe just a normal reaction) to having chopped chile peppers all afternoon at a BOH job I had in my 20s.
By the time I got home the only thing comfortable to lay my hands on was ice packs. It was a shit night. And the chef made fun of me the next day when I asked for gloves.
Plus I wear contacts. It’s just too easy to get that stuff into sensitive places…
Same. The sink is right there if I need to wash up after.
I find garlic in particular to linger even after repeated hand-washing, which is why I prefer not to wipe it (and other sticky odiferous items) with my fingers. Plus I keep my knives pretty sharp.
Guess I’m extra 
How is that pertinent?
Accidents happen. Stuff close to the edge n 'at, and my eerie talent to injure myself randomly. Just today I got a cardboard box cut on my index finger while opening a present a friend sent me.
Why tempt fate?
Ok. I mean, I keep my knives pretty sharp, too, yet I do the finger wipe for garlic and other sticky stuff.
My hesitance is 90% stonk, 10% possibility of cut. But really, mostly the stink and stickiness — and neither the garlic nor the ginger stick to the wooden chopstick as they would to my finger… perhaps I’m onto something 
If you rinse your hands while rubbing something made of stainless steel (like a spoon), the garlic smell disappears.
Scrape it against/across the cutting board if you don’t want to use your fingers.
Then it will stick to the edge of the cutting board.
I find my chopstick trick* to be super efficient, TBH. I was just curious what others do.
*I also use it to remove stubborn toast slices from the toaster.
The stainless trick. It works 100%.
Finger, because I’m lazy and don’t want to wash another tool. But I too find garlic extra persistent in its stickiness. I transfer minced garlic into a little dish and will rub the edge of the knife against the little dish if I have a lot of it. I also have soft cutting boards, so if I need to, I can just lift the whole “board” and get it into the pan that way if I wanted to.
Gloves or a plastic bag when I have to cut up hot peppers!
@linguafood I pretty much just use my hands/fingers and swipe off anything stuck on the knife. And I follow the Julia Child rule of “impeccably clean hands” whenever I cook 
I swipe off everything with fingers. Then, I avoid touching my eyes. Stainless works for stink.
I will sometimes wipe the garlic and/or ginger into the small mise bowl as well, BUT …
if y’all haven’t used the chopstick trick yer missing out. No need for stainless steel or endless handwashing, and no loss of sticky stinky chopped stuff
Supposedly, these things work. I’ve never tried. I just use my fingers. Hot peppers are never a problem since we almost never cook with them. I should, but hot sauce and chili oil/crisp seem to be enough for us.
I use hot peppers a LOT in my cooking, and — as I relayed to @kobuta, have zero interest in repeating my formative experience as a hotel kitchen cook
And why buy a stainless gadget when I have a wooden stick to help me every single day?
