Commercial Kitchen Mitts

A long mitt for reaching into an oven. A five-finger glove where grip matters, such as handling trays or a hot frying pan handle. A pot holder only for a short lift at the bench.

Most kitchens need the first two. The pot holder is the one that gets substituted with a cloth and should probably not be relied on at all.

Fabric insulates better dry and fails when wet. Silicone and neoprene are impervious, wipe clean and handle grease, which makes them the better choice near a fryer or a steamer.

Fabric is more comfortable for repeated use at a dry oven. A bakery with baking ovens usually prefers fabric; a kitchen with a commercial combi steam oven usually prefers silicone.

Water conducts heat far better than the still air trapped in a dry mitt, and it also turns to steam against a hot surface. A damp mitt is worse than a thin dry one.

Dry mitts between uses and retire anything that has been soaked. This is the single most useful habit at an oven door, and the reason tea towels and cloths should be kept for wiping.

Past the wrist as a minimum, and to the elbow for anything reached into. The burn that puts someone off work is on the forearm, not the palm.

Length is on each product page. Match it to the depth of the oven being reached into rather than to a general rule — a commercial deck oven needs more reach than a benchtop unit.

Fabric mitts usually can and must be fully dried before use again. Silicone and neoprene wipe down or go through a commercial dishwasher, and the product page states which.

A mitt that has been washed and is still damp is unusable, so hold spares so one can dry. Surface cleaners handle the greasy ones between washes.

As soon as the lining is compressed, scorched or has a hole. A mitt with a thin spot gives no warning before it fails, and staff keep using it because it still looks like a mitt.

Check them weekly with the rest of the station equipment and replace on sight. They are inexpensive enough that there is no argument — see commercial kitchen utensils for what else to check at the same time.

Hanging at the oven, dry and off the bench. In a drawer they get damp and forgotten; on the bench they get used as a trivet and then get wet.

A hook beside the oven door is all it takes — see commercial kitchen wall shelves and kitchen bench overshelves.

Catalogues list the same item as kitchen mitts, oven mitts, commercial oven mitts, kitchen gloves for oven and kitchen mittens, and the mitten spelling turns up often in online listings. Mitt is the term the trade uses, and none of the wording changes what matters: length up the forearm, how the material behaves when wet, and whether it can be washed.

Buy on those three things and ignore the listing title.