Using Gloves in the Kitchen

[Chris Amirault]

In another topic, I detailed my butchering jones, which I continue to feed very regularly. (There's a leg of lamb waiting for me at home tonight.) However, one element of that process has changed in the last year or so, and I've only now gotten up the courage to admit it.

I truly do appreciate the importance of a cook's tactile relationship to food. For years I watched and nodded as Julia Child tore apart things with her bare hands, and I agreed when James Beard admonished us from using all but the most essential tools so that we could use our very best ones at the ends of arms. However, in certain kitchen prep situations, I now consistently wear gloves. (Most often, I use these lightly powdered disposable vinyl gloves from Seidman.) Shameful though this seems, I think it makes good sense, depending on the situation:

• With few exceptions (fish, mostly), the proteins of choice in my house are cross-contaminants, and a glove helps me keep the meat out from under my fingernails, reducing the need to constantly wash my hands. In addition, when I'm done with the protein, I just toss the glove.
  A glove allows me to do whatever meat prep I have to do on one cutting board while I do vegetable prep on another, switching back and forth as needed simply by taking off the glove. This speeds things along on weeknight meals in particular, when I don't have the luxury of relaxed mise en place prep.
  A lot of the things I prep are very slippery (meats, wet vegetables, cooked beets), and the vinyl gloves give much better traction with them than a greasy or wet hand.
  Prepping chiles now takes a minute or two and doesn't risk a screaming fit when I take out my contacts at bedtime.
  Since I hold utensils and knives in my left hand, I usually put a glove (or several in sequence) on my right hand only. That means I always have one clean, dry hand. When I have to use my left hand for something messy, I just slip on a glove, do the deed (skinning a chicken, say), take off that left glove, and keep going.
  I no longer have red hands after skinning beets.
  

I know that there's an unspoken cult of glove-free cooking out there, but I'm not advocating wearing gloves 24/7 like I'm working BOH at Burger King. I just think that they're an underused tool in the kitchen.

What do you think? Do you use them? Would you never?

[Marlene]

I use them fairly regularly. For cutting up chickens, for kneading compound butters together or a beurre manie, or mixing hamburger for burgers to name a few of the times I use them.

[lperry]

Indispensable for chili pepper prep. I'm also a wimp and use them for washing dishes in really hot water (the thicker, latex ones).

[andiesenji]

I use gloves all the time, mainly because the surest way to get the phone to ring is to plunge my hands into soft, sticky dough, ground meat, a sticky mixture of nuts and fruits and other gloppy things.

It is so easy to simply strip off a glove and grab the phone, rather than try to clean gunk off a hand and still end up with a phone that is impossible to clean.

I buy the latex-free gloves in boxes of 100 at Smart & Final. Wouldn't be without them!

[CaliPoutine]

I use them too. At home and at work. I always wear them when dealing with raw chicken, beef or fish. Same with chili peppers.

[Busboy]

Like showering with a raincoat.

[Chris Amirault]

Say more, Charles.

[Busboy]

I like to touch what I'm cooking -- I like the feel and I like to get my hands dirty. Also, I feel as though I have better control over whatever I'm chopping when I'm bare-handed. Gloves are for wimps (ask Ted Williams or any oarsman), OCD cases and people subject to hyper-vigilant but ultimately misguided health inspectors. They're one more thing to misplace, lose, pull out of the dispose-all or met onto the stovetop. I hate that sweaty feeling.

[Chris Amirault]

I like to touch what I'm cooking -- I like the feel and I like to get my hands dirty.

So do I, as I said above.

Also, I feel as though I have better control over whatever I'm chopping when I'm bare-handed.

I usually do, too, but one of the reasons I do use gloves occasionally is precisely for better control -- see above.

Gloves are for wimps (ask Ted Williams or any oarsman), OCD cases and people subject to hyper-vigilant but ultimately misguided health inspectors. 

No OCD or hyper-vigilance here, though I suppose I may be a wimp; Ted Williams would certainly think so.

They're one more thing to misplace, lose, pull out of the dispose-all or met onto the stovetop.

Not really: don't have to worry about misplacing or losing them because they're disposable; I've never placed one on a stove or in a sink because they go right in the garbage pail when done.

I hate that sweaty feeling.

I thought you liked it when your hands were dirty? At any rate, this is where the lightly powdered ones are useful.

[Fat Guy]

Count me as a member of the "unspoken cult of glove-free cooking." It's not that I never use them. I definitely use them for chilies and sometimes for garlic (if I'm doing a lot of garlic). Also for when I work with pesticides or WD-40 lubricant. But for regular food I'm happy to wash my hands when necessary, because I have such a strong preference for feeling the food.

I haven't found that there's any time lost by sequencing my prep so that I deal with the meat and get it to the point where it doesn't have to be handled in its raw state anymore, then deal with everything else -- so there's only one serious hand-washing break. I'm having trouble envisioning why it would be more efficient to perform the back-and-forth off-and-on one-handed glove dance described above. I also prefer, from a food-safety perspective, not to alternate under any circumstances -- I don't even like to have meat and veg on the counter anywhere near each other at the same time. I deal with the meat, get it into a holding area or get it cooking (from here on in I'll be using tongs or whatever so no more handling), then remove the cutting board, wipe off the counter, and start with a fresh cutting board for the veg and other non-contaminating stuff. I also keep my fingernails really, really short.

[nibor]

Interesting! It would never have occurred to me to wear gloves while cooking. But then I don't wear shoes in the kitchen either. Is there a correlation? Are you gloved people also shod?

[Megan Blocker]

I use them fairly regularly.  For cutting up chickens, for kneading compound butters together or a beurre manie, or mixing hamburger for burgers to name a few of the times I use them.

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Oh, man! I love mixing buttery stuff with my bare (CLEAN!) hands. I love the feeling. I would never use gloves.

I feel like I've just revealed something somehow incriminating.

On a side (but still hygienic) note, while I never wear gloves, I have really long hair (growing it out for Locks of Love) and I always keep it tied back when I cook.

[markk]

I use them all the time, the disposable vinyl gloves you described, and in exactly the same situations and for the same reasons, plus one more. I have extremely dry skin, especially my hands. If I were to wash my hands as many times as is required while cooking, to avoid cross contamination, as well as before I went from skinning a piece of salmon to answering my phone, my skin would just come off, or be a dry, scaly mess. So I keep a dispenser of gloves handy, and put them on while prepping with the frequency that a doctor does when seeing patients.

Once, when I was running low, I examined what I was doing, and realized that I could actually wash the gloves (i.e. wash my hands with the gloves on) with hot water and Dawn, and then move on to touch something else, so now sometimes I do that, but I'm probably more likely to peel the gloves off and discard them and grab another pair in a few minutes when I need them.

The difference it makes to my hands is just astounding.

[dougal]

I don't generally use gloves.

BUT

I wished I had recently, when I was half way through making a jar of preserved lemons.

Salt and lemon juice seek out any hint of cracked/chapped skin... Marinating one's hands is painful!

[Arey]

I use disposable powdered gloves from CVS which come in small, medium or large. I primarily use them for handling raw meat such as chicken or hamburger, or when making them meatloaf. This time of year I also wear playtex gloves when doing the dishes, and I rub on eucerin moisturizing cream before putting on the gloves for dishwashing. Despite this I still have cracked fingertips and cracked and bleeding hands all winter. Squeezing lemons and cleaning spinach this time of year is an ordeal.

For Christmas I was given a moistering hand soap with the following ingredients - water, decyl & lauryl glucosides(natural coconut, corn starch& sugar soap blend), coco betaine (coconut oil moisturizer)sucrose ester (sugar moistirizer) soy protein, coco glucoside & glyceryl oleate (natural sunflower & coconut oil soap blend) honey glucose (sugar) ginger oil, neroli oil, grapefruit oil, lemongrass oil, lavendar oil, orange oil, lemon oil, lime oil, hyssop oil, eucalyptus oil, ylang ylang oi, rose oil, boronia oil, rosewood oil,bergamont oil, clove oil, pimento leaf oil, clary sage oil. nutmeg oil, litsea cubeba oil, vegetable glycerin, betaine (sugar beet, citric acid, glucose oxidase,& lactoperoxidase (natural preservative.

I'm not all that impressed with it as a hand soap, but I can't help wondering if it wouldn't taste good sprayed on grilled chicken breast or grilled fish.

[andiesenji]

I agree about the dry skin problem. I live in the desert, where the humidity is normally quite low anyway and I am very picky about anything I put on my skin - I buy plain old Vaseline in the industrial-sized jars - and I do a lot of pickling and preserving in brine, which is tough on the skin.

I don't have anything against anyone who wants to "feel" their food, as long as it doesn't affect me or mine. However, I have avoided consuming certain foods prepared by people who do not use gloves and who had obvious lesions on their hands (and I was embarassed to ask what they were but preferred to err on the side of safety).

I think it is prudent to use gloves if one is preparing foods for other than family and close friends. I purchased a coffee cake at a fund-raising bake sale a couple of months ago and when I was portioning it, I found a Band-Aid in it and tossed it.

Yuck!

[duck833]

I do lots of smoking of various meats. We use gloves for much of the process, coating the brisket with yellow mustard, rubs, trimming fat etc. Many pair get tossed throughout the process.

We also use them when dealing with hot meat coming out of the cooker and for slicing or pulling pork. I get white mechanics gloves and put the disposable food service gloves over them. The cotton mechanics gloves provides a good insulator and keeps fingers from getting burned. Easier using this combination when removing large brisket and butts from the smoker.

[andiesenji]

I use disposable powdered gloves from CVS which come in small, medium or large.  I primarily use them for handling raw meat such as chicken or hamburger, or when making them meatloaf.  This time of year I also wear playtex gloves when doing the dishes, and I rub on eucerin moisturizing cream before putting on the gloves for dishwashing.  Despite this I still have cracked fingertips and cracked and bleeding hands all winter.  Squeezing lemons and cleaning spinach this time of year is an ordeal.

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For the past year or so, I have been using moisturizing gloves, purchased from Hammacher Schlemmer, which are absolutely amazing. They are not cheap, last about three months or so, but work better than anything else I have every tried. I sent a pair to my daughter, who always has problems in cold weather, and she has noted great improvement after only three weeks use.

People have commented on how "young" my hands appear - wish they had something for the face! (I will be 69 in March.) moisturizing gloves.

[JimH]

Disposable food service gloves are the best. One size fits all, no powder and 500 to a box. I buy them at Sam's as they save me from washing my hands too often.

[Chris Hennes]

I have taken to using gloves when hand-coating chocolate truffles, but otherwise I just arrange my prep so that the meat goes first, then I wash my hands, then I never touch it again. No sense adding even more garbage when it seems to me to be completely unnecessary (cooking with chiles, OK, but what exactly are you protecting yourself or others from not touching raw meat? Just wash your hands!)

[C. sapidus]

Prepping chiles now takes a minute or two and doesn't risk a screaming fit when I take out my contacts at bedtime.

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Indispensable for chili pepper prep.

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I always wear them when dealing with . . . chili peppers.

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I definitely use them for chilies . . .

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C'mon, where is your sense of adventure? Working with chiles bare-handed teaches you to wash your hands thoroughly. And yes, I wore contact lenses for years (and still do for sports).

If you wear latex gloves, look out for contact dermatitis and latex allergy.

[Marlene]

I use them fairly regularly.  For cutting up chickens, for kneading compound butters together or a beurre manie, or mixing hamburger for burgers to name a few of the times I use them.

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Oh, man! I love mixing buttery stuff with my bare (CLEAN!) hands. I love the feeling. I would never use gloves.

I feel like I've just revealed something somehow incriminating.

←

As much as I might love the feeling of using my bare hands, I get really tired of cleaning out all that stuff from underneath my nails every time.

[markk]

I use disposable powdered gloves from CVS which come in small, medium or large.  I primarily use them for handling raw meat such as chicken or hamburger, or when making them meatloaf.  This time of year I also wear playtex gloves when doing the dishes, and I rub on eucerin moisturizing cream before putting on the gloves for dishwashing.  Despite this I still have cracked fingertips and cracked and bleeding hands all winter.  Squeezing lemons and cleaning spinach this time of year is an ordeal.

For Christmas I was given a moistering hand soap with the following ingredients - water, decyl & lauryl glucosides(natural coconut, corn starch& sugar soap blend), coco betaine (coconut oil moisturizer)sucrose ester (sugar moistirizer) soy protein, coco glucoside & glyceryl  oleate (natural sunflower & coconut oil soap blend) honey glucose (sugar) ginger oil, neroli oil, grapefruit oil, lemongrass oil, lavendar oil, orange oil, lemon oil, lime oil, hyssop oil, eucalyptus oil, ylang ylang oi, rose oil, boronia oil, rosewood oil,bergamont oil, clove oil, pimento leaf oil, clary sage oil. nutmeg oil, litsea cubeba oil, vegetable glycerin, betaine (sugar beet, citric acid, glucose oxidase,& lactoperoxidase (natural preservative.

I'm not all that impressed with it as a hand soap, but I can't help wondering if it wouldn't  taste good sprayed on grilled chicken breast or grilled fish.

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That's really funny - I didn't see where you were going with that!

In olden times, before I got the glove idea, I'd wash my hands as I cooked, and apply my ointment. And when people would say "Wow, that's delicious - what am I tasting in there?", I would answer, "cortisone creme, probably".

[rooftop1000]

I quit cooking professionally when NJ started with a glove law, but I use them for meatballs and portioning out meat into freezer bags after shopping

tracey

[Chris Amirault]

You quit because of the law?