While kitchen towels often serve as de facto oven mitts and pot holders, grabbing an actual oven mitt or pot holder can make your cooking experience safer and easier. After testing more than 17 oven mitts, pot holders, and oven gloves since 2014, we think the Homwe Extra Long Professional Silicone Oven Mitt and the OXO Good Grips Silicone Pot Holder offer the best combination of heat protection, comfort, and maneuverability.
In addition to being heat-proof, the silicone exterior of this oven mitt is grippy, easy to maneuver, and water resistant, while the polyester-cotton lining adds extra protection and comfort.
Although these terry-lined silicone mitts are a little pricey, they’re the best-looking option we’ve found for mitts that offer good coverage.
This pot holder has a silicone exterior that provides better heat protection than plain terry-cloth pot holders.
These gloves offer more dexterity than a mitt or a pot holder, but they’re less heat-proof.
In addition to being heat-proof, the silicone exterior of this oven mitt is grippy, easy to maneuver, and water resistant, while the polyester-cotton lining adds extra protection and comfort.
At 15 inches in length, the Homwe Extra Long Professional Silicone Oven Mitt is long enough to protect your forearms from a hot oven or sheet pan. It’s easier to maneuver than others we tested, and we were able to comfortably lift a hot, heavy cast-iron skillet or remove an unwieldy roasting pan from the oven without getting burned. The Homwe mitt is easy to clean, and we appreciated the comfortable fabric lining.
Although these terry-lined silicone mitts are a little pricey, they’re the best-looking option we’ve found for mitts that offer good coverage.
If you’re looking for more attractive mitts to hang in your kitchen, the Five Two Silicone Oven Mitts offer the best combination of good looks and good coverage that we’ve found. While similar in design to the Homwe mitts, they have a simpler look and come in four stylish, muted colors. Aside from their form, they also function better in a few ways: with Five Two mitts, we were able hold hot items for longer while testing, and we found they offered better forearm protection than the Homwe mitts, whose slit positioning tended to expose the inside of your arm. Magnets in the Five Two cuffs also allow you to stick them on the fridge or keep them together more easily. The Five Two mitts do lack some of the dexterity of the Homwe mitts due to their shorter thumb. However, these mitts still work better than most for day-to-day tasks, especially if if style is your priority.
This pot holder has a silicone exterior that provides better heat protection than plain terry-cloth pot holders.
For extra heat protection from a pot holder, we like the OXO Good Grips Silicone Pot Holder. It is more expensive than some terry-cloth models, but it was able to protect our hands the longest of any pot holder we tested—roughly on a par with the Homwe mitt. It has a pocket for your hand to keep it secure, and its silicone side is grippy and waterproof. It’s also larger than others we tested, which gives you more coverage, although it can also be a little harder to manipulate around a pot lid.
These gloves offer more dexterity than a mitt or a pot holder, but they’re less heat-proof.
We like that the Grill Armor Extreme Heat-Resistant Oven Gloves give you more control than our other picks when moving hot pans or grilling. Though they’re reasonably protective, they aren’t as heat resistant as our other picks, so you’ll need to make sure you’re not left holding a hot pan with nowhere to put it when you use these. They’re also quite large, so those with smaller hands may find them clunky.
Professional cooks typically use side towels instead of oven mitts because they are inexpensive in bulk, easy to clean, and versatile for a wide range of kitchen jobs.
Why you should trust us
To help us find the best pot holders and oven mitts to test, we turned to people who work with food outside of professional kitchens (restaurant chefs and line cooks typically use side towels when cooking). We spoke to Kate McDermott, James Beard nominee and author of Art of the Pie, who teaches pie workshops in her home kitchen, and Melissa Clark, food writer, cookbook author, and staff reporter for the food section of The New York Times.
We also looked at pot holder and oven mitt reviews from Cook’s Illustrated (subscription required), as well as customer reviews of highly rated models on Amazon.
Since 2014, we have spent dozens of hours testing oven mitts, pot holders, and oven gloves in the Wirecutter test kitchen. This guide builds on work from Wirecutter senior editor Christine Cyr Clisset.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
In our experience, silicone oven mitts often retain heat for several seconds after holding a hot pan. Just be mindful of how you handle the Homwe mitt after touching hot items. The extra-long Homwe oven mitt doesn’t come in a ton of color options, but it is available in red, black, or aqua. We don’t think these options are as attractive as those of our upgrade pick, but the mitts get the job done.
Equipment Expert’s Favorite Oven Mitts
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