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Cook’s Country Reviews Oven Mitts

Oven Mitts
When you do a lot of baking, oven mitts and potholders are an everyday tool that is as important as your oven is – especially if you want to get whatever you’re baking out of the oven. While you can use a dishtowel wrapped around your hand, oven mitts give you a better grip and a little more peace of mind when lifting anything out of a 350F oven. Towards the holidays, more people than usual are baking, whether they’re roasting a turkey for Thanksgiving or baking batches of holiday Christmas cookies, and that means that the review of oven mitts in a recent issue (Dec/Jan 2012) of Cook’s Country should come in handy for almost everyone.

The magazine set out to find an oven mitt that offered a lot of heat protection as well as offering a lot of maneuverability. Mitts that were too thick made it difficult to grip a cookie sheet securely, while thinner mitts gave you a more secure grip. Some of those thinner mitts, however, didn’t offer the heat protection of the larger gloves. They tested the mitts with casserole dishes pulled from a 450F oven and, to measure heat resistance, held them as long as possible (do not try this at home!) while they were wired with heat sensors to see how much heat got through the gloves and how quickly. They also looked for mitts that were washable and easy to care for.

The test winner was the Kool-Tek 15-inch Oven Mitt, which offered great heat resistance, good pan control and came out of the laundry looking good-as-new. Also highly recommended was the Orkaplus Silicone Oven Mitt with Cotton Lining, which performed as well as the Kool-Tek for less than half the price. Gloves that came in with lower, but still good, ratings included the Calphalon 14-inch Oven Mitt and the Oxo Good Grips Silicone Oven Mitt which were not as grip-friendly as the winners, as well as the Le Creuset Oven Mitt, which work well but didn’t hold up quite as well after repeated washings.

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5 Comments
  • Ginger
    November 22, 2011

    I bought my oven mitts from a Costco Business Center. They were $4 each and cover me all the way up to my elbows (because I’m special enough to burn my forearms on my oven), are thick enough to protect me from any temperature, but pliable enough that I don’t feel like my hands are in boots. They are AMAZING.

  • katy
    November 22, 2011

    Any ideas where to find good oven mitts that fit smaller hands? Standard sized mitts are too big for my hands – I can’t get a good grip on pans etc. I’ve been using the same small mitts for 10 years and they’ve been abused to the point of falling apart (and I have no idea where they originally came from)… I need to find a replacement!

  • Angel
    November 22, 2011

    I bought the Kool-Tek gloves on their recommendation. After being used to a puppet-style mitt for a while (thumb goes below the other fingers instead of to one side) I regretted switching to their conventional mitt. (Kool-Tek also makes a puppet mitt.) They’re huge on me; I have long fingers but slender hands, so they feel loose and bulky when I put them on. I also wish they were one or two inches shorter in the sleeve.

    That said, they have *amazing* temperature protection compared to my old BB&B mitts and the Ove’ Glove. These are the mitts I go to unless I need good dexterity. I would probably buy the puppet mitt instead if I do it again, but I don’t think I’ll need to replace these any time soon.

  • Cooking class
    December 2, 2011

    I’ve been wary of gloves that aren’t cotton or dense fabric.
    Do the silicone based gloves stand up to the intense heat – especially after repeated use?
    What I know about silicone based things is if they’re not protected, they can easily dry up and crack.
    On the upside, they tend to to grip better to pots and pans.
    I’m going to try out the OrkaPlus, then maybe introduce them in our cooking classes.

  • alex
    June 18, 2015

    I have been got a pair of fivebop silicone oven mitts, they really works and protect my hands when i do pig roast. The oven gloves sale at amazon.com you can search fivebop oven mitts and find it easily!

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