The 3 Best Grill Gloves of 2024, Tested by Food & Wine

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These gloves are also great for ovens or even changing lightbulbs. Super-Lubricious Pe

The 3 Best Grill Gloves of 2024, Tested by Food & Wine

No one likes to scorch their hands and arms while grilling. But the only protection you could find for the longest time was a pair of work gloves, oven mitts, or a folded-over dish towel. The common thread between these is that they’re all flammable, which makes them less than ideal. Oven mitts and dish towels offer at least a little thermal protection when you’re grabbing hot pans or grates, but they lack agility. And work gloves don’t offer much better when using utensils or delicate work.

Grill gloves offer way more dexterity, fine motor skill ability, and heat insulation than the previous solutions, though in varying degrees. Many also provide wrist and forearm coverage. We tested 24 pairs of the leading grill gloves, spending over 100 hours gathering our results. We examined a full spectrum of materials, including leather, silicone, aramid, and neoprene. In that, we found the best grill gloves are heat-resistant with a good fit, grip, and movement; water-resistant or food-grade material is a plus. We narrowed down three pairs to pick from.

These Grill Armor Gloves provide good heat protection, ample dexterity, and a good grip, even when picking up greasy objects.

They took minor damage when handling logs in a fire pit.

The Grill Armor Gloves took our best overall rating for their comfort, design, and general heat resistance. Although they’re available in smaller sizes, we tested a one-size-fits-most model, and even with smaller-handed people, the size didn’t sacrifice grip or dexterity. The grip on these gloves is excellent and not diminished by greasy or slippery objects, even when trying to hold smooth-handled stainless steel. We could also grip utensils, cans, and skewers with a full range of motion. Dexterity and grip are great, but how much heat resistance did they provide? The over-wrist design protects the arm's more delicate skin, and we could hold hot metal skewers for 40 seconds before we felt the heat. Handling logs in a fire pit, however, damaged the gloves.

Material: Silicone, aramid | Length: 10.6 inches

Food & Wine / Katie McDonald

These gloves provide good heat protection at about half the competition's price.

You can’t use the Comsmart gloves when wet, and they don’t have the same heat resistance as some of the more expensive gloves we tested.

If you’re buying grilling gloves on a budget, you could do much worse than the Comsmart BBQ Gloves. The three-layer design blends heat protection with dexterity and comfort. The silicone provides solid gripping, and we had no issues holding grilling tools or picking up a soda can. The aramid layer provides heat and cut protection. While not as well-insulated as some other, more expensive gloves, this pair let us hold a cast iron pan for 10 seconds before feeling the heat. We did see some discoloration after picking up a 600°F pizza stone for less than 10 seconds, but the hot stone didn’t damage the gloves. Finally, this pair wasn’t overly long but did provide wrist and forearm protection when using grilling tools over a fire.

Material: Silicone, aramid, cotton/polyester blend | Length: 8 inches

Food & Wine / Kyle McKinnon

The Ooni Pizza Gloves are sturdy and provide excellent heat protection for hands and forearms.

The size of the fingers makes them clumsy for fine work, and you can’t wash them.

Ooni makes some of our favorite indoor and outdoor pizza ovens, and the brand designed these gloves with the high heat of Neapolitan-style temperatures in mind. We tested them at the grill as well as in the kitchen. These soft leather gloves are big and burly, covering most of our editor's forearms. There’s also ample finger room, if not too much. Simple tasks requiring dexterity, like picking up a koozie, weren’t a problem, but the extra space in the fingers prevented us from even opening a can. Likewise, we could lift a cast iron pan from the oven or a grate from the grill with excellent heat protection, but we couldn’t slip a finger between the grates. Putting a pin in the size for a moment, once we could get a good grip on tools or pans, the gloves presented no problem in maintaining that grip, even when encountering water or grease. All that said, they have good heat protection and are built to last, presenting a value for the price.

Material: Leather, flannelette, canvas, aluminum | Length: 14 inches

Food & Wine / Jason Horn

Deciding on a favorite was difficult from these test results, as seven sets of gloves performed comparably. Because of similar scores, we had to split hairs to determine which gloves made our Top Picks and which didn’t. Given that problem, we like the Grill Armor Gloves Extreme Heat-Resistant Oven Gloves for their grip, dexterity, heat resistance, and overall value.

We put 24 pairs of gloves through three significant tests. The first demonstrated their direct-heat insulation properties. We heated a cast iron pan in an oven to 500°F and then started a stopwatch, measuring the time it took for the heat to become uncomfortable while holding the pan’s handle. The next set of tests involved using them while performing a set of grilling tasks, including lifting a burning charcoal chimney starter, moving burning logs, lifting grill grates, and using grilling utensils like tongs and spatulas. The last test was cleaning them according to the manufacturer’s instructions to see how easy or difficult that task was.

We then scored them on the impressions collected. How did they fit? Were they easily damaged? Did they provide wrist or forearm protection? We then used scoring on a scale of one to five to rate them for heat resistance, waterproofing, slip resistance, and ease of cleaning.

With testing and scoring completed, we weighted the scores with performance accounting for 40%, overall design at 30%, how easy they were to use at 20%, and ease of cleaning at 10%. We used these weighted average scores to discern between our winners, those that were good but maybe fell short, and those with too many significant shortcomings to recommend.

Grill gloves come in several materials, with some constructed of more than one. Each material has plusses and minuses, so weigh what you prefer before purchasing. It’s smart to look for gloves with a washable interior liner, as grill gloves aren’t typically breathable, which makes for sweaty hands when combined with high heat. A washable liner helps keep the interior clean after use.

Aramid is a synthetic material frequently used in making firefighting gear. It’s lightweight, feels more cloth-like than most commonly used materials, has high heat resistance, and is strong when resisting cuts. Wet aramid renders all the heat resistance moot, however, as with most cloth-like gloves. So, be sure the gloves are completely dry after cleaning before using them around heat.

Silicone has excellent grease resistance, so gloves made of this material are ideal for smoking meats or other food handling. Silicone is largely non-absorbent, which makes these gloves easy to clean. Silicone, however, has a lower heat resistance than many other materials, and it’s somewhat inflexible, which makes using utensils clumsy.

Neoprene gloves have high heat resistance but are also absorbent when uncoated, so they’re not a good material for handling food in that state. Neoprene gloves are typically lower priced than those made with other materials and tend to fit better.

Leather is a time-tested material. Think of what blacksmiths wore for centuries. It’s very comfortable, but it’s also absorbent and difficult to clean. When well-treated, leather gloves have great longevity, but they come with a price that reflects it. That said, while leather was the industry standard for a long time, newer materials that offer better heat resistance have since surpassed them.

Material and construction are the main factors affecting a glove’s dexterity inhibition. A tighter, closer-fitting glove typically gives better finger dexterity, but sometimes at the cost of heat resistance. Flexible materials, like neoprene or aramid, give better dexterity, but neither has good heat resistance when wet or greasy.

Buy your gloves in line with their use. Leather gloves are great for handling fire and hot metal, but you don’t want to use them in direct contact with food because they’re difficult to clean, and you can’t just throw them in the washer. Consider dishwasher-safe silicone for direct food contact, as it won’t absorb grease but isn’t as heat-resistant as other materials. You may want to buy more than one pair of gloves, one highly heat-resistant for dealing directly with your fire and another food-safety-rated pair for food handling.

This one is a bit deceiving. The temperature listed for a glove’s heat resistance is the maximum ambient temperature it can withstand. That does not correspond to direct heat. A high-temperature-rated glove can be fine for working over the grill but horrible for picking up a hot pan or grill grate. So, don’t choose gloves based on this rating. You’re best off choosing a pair based on reviews and real-world impressions of heat resistance.

Not in the least. Humans have dealt with fire for somewhere between 500,000 and one million years, give or take a year or two. Neanderthals built cooking ovens, and we can safely surmise that they weren’t using silicone or aramid to deal with fires. So, no, you don’t need them.

That said, grill gloves are very handy to have as one of your go-to barbecue tools. When grilling or smoking, everything is hot, from your chimney starter to your grill to the food. There are precious few tools well suited for moving a whole pork butt or chicken on a hot smoker, but with gloves, you can just lift them off the heat with your hands. Heat insulation from flames and coals is great, too. Moving burning logs or charcoal to better bank your fire is much easier with hands than with most tools, especially if the gloves cover your forearms and hands. So, no, you don’t need them. But life is more pleasant with them.

As a rule, replace your gloves when they show signs of significant wear or when you start to feel more heat through them than when you first bought them. For gloves with liners, it’s time to replace them when the insides start wearing out. How long it takes to reach those points depends on the durability of the gloves in the first place, so the lifespan is not a constant across the realm of grill gloves.

Grill Armor Waterproof BBQ Gloves ($30 at Amazon) The extended length of these waterproof gloves gave our wrists and forearms excellent protection, and their texture allowed us to grasp objects without worrying about slipping. They're not as heat-resistant as other Grill Armor gloves, but if you want a pair you can use for more than grilling, like plucking ears of corn from a boiling pot, consider these.

Cuisinart Heat Resistant Grill Gloves ($25 Amazon) The Cuisinart Heat Resistant Grill Gloves performed very well in our testing, garnering great scores in every category. The fact that their heat rating is significantly lower than some of the others kept them from gaining a “Best” designation.

Grill Heat Aid BBQ Gloves ($38 Amazon) These gloves also scored well in dexterity and gripping, with good heat resistance, too. They were a bit snug on average-sized hands, so you might consider that when purchasing if you have larger hands.

Jolly Green Products Ekogrips Premium Heat-Resistant BBQ Gloves ($29 at Amazon) These Ekogrips gloves scored well across almost every category. We liked that they covered the wrist, and the waterproofing made them stand up to steam, but they didn’t grip as well as others when faced with greasy objects.

Kitchen Perfection Silicone Smoker/Oven Gloves ($29 at Amazon) The Kitchen Perfection gloves provided good heat protection and cleaned up quickly with a little dish soap and water. They run big, though. We found the one-size-fits-most size ran large, even for someone with big hands. Because of their size and partially due to their construction, they were not the most graceful gloves, and they provided some challenges with grip and dexterity.

Fireside Outdoor Thermal Protection Gloves ($23 at REI) The Fireside gloves provided good protection for most tasks. They ran a little big, which impinged on dexterity. And while they’re well-padded at the palm, we started feeling direct heat in the fingers considerably sooner than in the palm.

Rapicca BBQ Gloves ($26 at Amazon) Thanks to their coated neoprene construction, these gloves were great for handling food with good grip and dexterity. The time before feeling the heat when holding hot items, about 10 seconds, fell short of other comparable gloves we tested, though.

Pit Boss Brown Leather Grill Gloves ($26 at Amazon) These leather gloves covered the wrist and forearms well, and the close-fitted design didn’t sacrifice much dexterity. They’re not for direct food contact and aren’t water-resistant, however, and they also have a shorter heat protection time when handling hot pans than others we tested.

Charcoal Companion Ultimate Barbecue Pit Mitt Gloves ($40 Williams Sonoma) The long cuffs and textured material gave these gloves good protection and grip. They have a relatively low heat resistance rating, which, for the price, seemed like a detractor when compared to our winners.

Outset Brown Leather Grill Gloves ($30 at Amazon) The Outset Grill Gloves were perfectly serviceable for protecting your hands and arms from ambient heat. While suitable for opening hot grills or stoking coals, they didn’t provide much protection from direct heat, though, with our hot skillet test lasting about eight seconds before having to put it down.

Rösle Leather Grilling Gloves ($50 at Williams Sonoma) This pair of leather gloves is very sturdy. Perhaps too sturdy. The leather was stiff and close-fitting, which required extra effort to flex or move fingers. Like most leather gloves we tested, they’re better suited for ambient heat protection rather than gripping hot pans or grates.

Weber Premium Gloves ($49 at Amazon) The Weber Premium Gloves provided a full range of motion and good grip, thanks to the silicone palms. They offered surprisingly short protection from direct heat for their thickness, unfortunately.

Some grill gloves we tested just didn’t score high enough to make the list. The Lodge Black Leather Grilling Gloves ($25 at Home Depot) were surprisingly disappointing in their direct heat resistance, given how well other Lodge products have performed in many of our tests. The Weber Silicone Grilling Gloves ($25 at Amazon) likewise disappointed for such a respected brand. The gloves were ill-fitting, gave little direct heat resistance, and were clumsy in gripping. In a final brand letdown, the Cuisinart Heat Resistant Silicone Gloves ($10 Amazon) felt awkward and didn’t provide direct heat resistance.

The Fabric Greg Baker is an award-winning chef, restaurateur, and food writer with four decades of experience in the food industry. His written work appears in Food & Wine, Serious Eats Tasting Table, Food Republic, and other publications.

The 3 Best Grill Gloves of 2024, Tested by Food &amp; Wine

The 3 Best Grill Gloves of 2024, Tested by Food & Wine