Oven glove
A textile that handles hot food and then goes back in a drawer. Named alongside cloths and sponges as something that needs washing.
Start here
What this is, what tends to go wrong with it, and what to do about it.
In detail
Oven gloves are listed by the food-safety guidance in the same breath as dish cloths, tea towels and sponges: wash or change them regularly, and wash AND DRY them before using them again, because dirty and damp items encourage bacteria to grow. They are worth singling out because they are the item on that list people least often think of as laundry. A glove picks up spilled food and fat, is used to move raw and cooked food alike, is frequently damp from steam, and then spends the rest of the day folded in a warm kitchen — which is close to the ideal condition the same guidance warns about. The practical constraint is that a padded glove dries slowly, so the drying half of the instruction takes longer than it does for a cloth.
Aftercare and prevention
- Machine washing requires the aftercare Oven glove
Dry it thoroughly.
Sources for this page
Sources
Food Standards Agency, United Kingdom (GOV.UK) · Government or regulator
Relied on for: That dish cloths, tea towels, sponges and oven gloves are washed or changed regularly, and washed and dried before being used again, because dirty and damp items encourage bacteria to grow. (states this directly)