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  1. Is the towel to prevent heat and injury? Aren't their woks' handle insulated enough?

  2. If the insulation falls short, how's a towel a stop-gap? What if the chef accidentally touches the wok without the cloth?

3. Aren't HEAVY-DUTY HEAT-RESISTANT gloves safer?

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I screen-shot 0:21 of Chef Mok Kit Keung (and 2 others) at Shang Palace, Kowloon Shangri-La.

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and Chef Paul Lau Yiu Fai wok-frying Spotted Garoupa Fillet at Tin Lung Heen. This post has 2 more photos.

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Community
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    I am not a chef, but I actually tried this at home. It turned out that none of my pans and pots are designed to be handled with gloves, and that handling kitchenware without fine motor control is positively dangerous. –  Nov 21 '19 at 12:50
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    It is a towel, not a cloth. Big difference as everyone knows one should never be found without one's towel. – Mindwin Remember Monica Nov 21 '19 at 17:18
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    @Mindwin A towel, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. – Gamora Nov 21 '19 at 17:30
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    Try cooking with gloves. Any gloves. Now you know why people don't cook with gloves. – Mast Nov 21 '19 at 23:05
  • Just put the glove over the pan. Done. – Minix Nov 22 '19 at 13:11
  • @Mindwin "as everyone knows one should never be found without one's towel." Pls elaborate? I don't know this. –  Nov 29 '19 at 10:19
  • @Explorer [Don't panic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy) – Chris H Nov 29 '19 at 10:45
  • Our kitchen has official oven mitts, and I'm not allowed to use the towels for their purpose. So I typically fold a mitt in half and use it like a thick cloth. – Ray Butterworth Nov 29 '19 at 15:04

3 Answers3

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Because it is more efficient when running the kitchen while in full service.

It takes less time to remove their hands from the towels than it would take to remove gloves.

This also applies to chefs in other kind of cuisines; if you look at french cooks, they will do the same thing; grab a towel to pick something from the oven, or pick a pan from the stove.

Max
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  • 1. "It takes less time to remove their hands from the towels than it would take to remove gloves." Really? Do 30 s matter that much??? –  Nov 21 '19 at 02:37
  • 2. "It takes less time to remove their hands from the towels than it would take to remove gloves." Even if so, what of safety? I'd rather be safe than sorry. –  Nov 21 '19 at 02:38
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    @Explorer In a busy kitchen, five seconds matter. Safety? A cook doesn't wear cut-resistant gloves. Have you seen the hands of a busy cook? Not pretty from all he cuts and burns. – Johannes_B Nov 21 '19 at 05:20
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    @Explorer A towel is cheap, easy to grab and good to throw in the basket for cleaning. – Johannes_B Nov 21 '19 at 05:22
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    @Explorer Another thing to remember: The time you need to put on gloves is also needed to get rid of them. If you, by accident, spill all the super hot frying oil over your hand ... you might as well get the next knife and cut the glove (including the hand) to save your arm. – Johannes_B Nov 21 '19 at 05:25
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    @Explorer gloves are not necessarily safer, if they make it harder to grip the pan properly. – alephzero Nov 21 '19 at 11:25
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    @Explorer If you're handling hot pans a hundred times during your shift, 30 seconds each time adds up to most of an hour spent putting gloves on and taking them off. – David Richerby Nov 21 '19 at 14:32
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    You might want to add to this answer that a towel can be easily picked up, used, and dropped with a single hand, while the other hand is holding something else. Gloves are difficult to apply and remove one-handed. – barbecue Nov 21 '19 at 15:12
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    I would really also add somebodies comment about how much easier they are to wash. – WendyG Nov 21 '19 at 15:47
  • In addition, it's common to use a service that provides clean towels however often the business has contracted for (e.g. daily, a couple/few times a week, weekly). Such services supply clean towels, linen, etc. At the same time, the service takes away the dirty linen, which they wash and sanitize. Thus, from the business' point of view, using the towel has very little incremental cost. However, if there was something that was even more efficient, wrt. the time needed to use it/cost, then the business would do so. – Makyen Nov 21 '19 at 17:06
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    Totally agree, I have worked as a chef and my boyfriend constantly tells me off (in a caring way) for not using oven gloves because I am just so used to using a tea towel. Yeah my hands are constantly cut/burnt but you do get used to it and also have more dexterity – Gamora Nov 21 '19 at 17:28
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    The amount of wasted time that adds up probably isn't as important as the fact that the cooking process doesn't pause for you to put your gloves on and off. Inserting that stage into the process forces you stop something else early to attend to the wok, whose contents will keep on cooking while you're putting on the gloves. You will also have to find somewhere to put down whatever you have in your non-wok hand as putting on even one glove will require both hands. Ultimately it makes it harder to cook with as precise timings in general. – Will Nov 22 '19 at 10:38
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    @Johannes_B What damage would the arm be saved from, by cutting off a freshly burned hand? – Minix Nov 22 '19 at 13:12
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    @minix that was very exaggerated. Not to be taken too serious. – Johannes_B Nov 22 '19 at 13:20
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    "The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts." – Dannie Nov 22 '19 at 16:11
  • @Johannes_B I think you overlooked "heavy-duty heat-resistant gloves". "In a busy kitchen, five seconds matter." Again, safety must come first. I certainly don't mind waiting longer at restaurants. Those who don't are unethical in endangering chefs! –  Nov 29 '19 at 10:21
  • @DavidRicherby Safety must come first. I certainly don't mind waiting longer at restaurants. Those who don't are unethical in endangering chefs! –  Nov 29 '19 at 10:22
  • Most commenters overlooked "heavy-duty heat-resistant" gloves, not just any glove. –  Nov 29 '19 at 10:22
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    @Explorer it's not so much waiting longer as paying more - the restaurant would have lower capacity. But having used both I'd say there's a time and a place for gloves (they're called "oven gloves" for a reason) and another for a towel or similar. The gloves in your picture would be terrible in a kitchen. Try using a teaspoon to measure spices while wearing them, for example: no dexterity at all. – Chris H Nov 29 '19 at 10:49
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    @Explorer I think you may have some misconceptions about the suitability of "heavy duty heat resistant gloves" for a commercial kitchen. Other commenters have already pointed out the safety and sanitation risks inherent to gloves, particularly the unwieldy ones you linked to in your original post. Even in situations where a tea towel would provide insufficient heat isolation, a pot-holder would be better than those. – Sneftel Nov 29 '19 at 12:12
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    @Explorer But you haven’t identified any actual safety issue! – David Richerby Nov 29 '19 at 12:52
  • @Explorer I use a tea towel regularly to get hot baking trays out of my home oven. *Never burnt me* so far doing *this*. Burnt myself two minutes later when I didn't pay as much *attention anymore* and the tea towel (or a glove) is long gone; *several times*. – Johannes_B Nov 29 '19 at 16:07
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    I have also seen people using heat-resistant gloves when grilling and they expected the gloves to never heat up even when holding something hot for a long period of time. When the heat did get through, they couldn't get the gloves off fast enough. – doneal24 Nov 29 '19 at 17:02
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Hygiene issues: The inside of the glove gets dirty pretty fast so basically you have to wash you hands after every use of the glove.

They're much harder to clean then a towel.

Pieter B
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Another factor is that decent gloves allowing some fine-motor skills as well as easy putting on and off have to fit well, and not everyone has the same size hands. So every chef has to carry their own pair of gloves, or every station has to have a set (colour-coded perhaps). Even then they're slow to put on and take off, and quite likely to end up getting dropped on the floor in the process (e.g. if you're carrying something as well). This adds up to time and cost savings for not using well-fitting gloves. Simple oven gloves could be used but don't have much fine control.

In practice if you provide ill-fitting clumsy gloves, people will only use them if they know they'll burn themselves otherwise, while something instant and easy is more likely to be used in a precautionary way. To put it bluntly, inappropriate safety gear makes things worse.

The actual risks of using a suitable cloth are minimal once you're used to it.

Chris H
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