genuine question: why would you own and cook with a wooden spoon at all
I do not understand what advantage they are supposed to have that makes caring for them worth it
you have a point. uh. they tend to be nice and long and substantially built, and they don’t convey heat, and all of that makes them good for bothering things in the middle of cooking that need to be encouraged to mix thoroughly or turned over so as to cook evenly and not stick to the pan. a metal utensil would get hot too fast in that kind of ongoing situation. but why we can’t just have extra long and sturdy polymer utensils, i don’t know. maybe a real cook can comment!
historically, because wood is inexpensive and abundant. they’re traditional and they work relatively well so why not?
unlike plastic, wood does not melt, and unlike metal, wood is soft and won’t scratch delicate cookware.
in 2021 if you want to use synthetics you can get synthetics that work in most situations. if you don’t want to have a wooden spoon you don’t need to.
some people prefer wood because it may have better antimicrobial properties. afaict no one is totally sure about that.
personally, I like wooden spoons and cutting boards because I think they’re pretty. olive wood is a little less practical than bamboo, but it’s like $10 to use something beautiful every day.
I’m not sure what the concern is about caring for wooden spoons - I treat my wooden and plastic spoons the same way, in that I wash them with a sponge and then let them dry.
Personally I would be about equally concerned with bacterial or whatever growth on wooden and plastic/silicone/etc. spoons, in micro-crevises of the utensil that a sponges don't seem to clean out. This is based on experience that both wood and silicone cooking utensils tend to get stained by tumeric and some other spices in ways that take many wash cycles to totally fade -- I haven't done any actual research on the topic.
Wood self-sterilizes by drying out. The grain structure allows for the interior of scratches to dry as thoroughly as the surface. This is not true for non-porous materials like plastic in which biofilms can survive for extended periods. The main reason to not leave wood soaking is that repeated deep cycling between wet and dry will eventually cause mechanical damage in the form of large cracks.
See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31113026/ and other work by Dean Cliver for more info on microbiology of wood cutting boards.
Another benefit of wood is that it handles higher temperature than other spatula materials like nylon (which is often sold for high-temp use, despite warping on a griddle)