Why do Hong Kong chefs use a white towel instead of gloves to clutch a wok?
Is the towel to prevent heat and injury? Aren't their woks' handle insulated enough?
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?
I screen-shot 0:21 of Chef Mok Kit Keung (and 2 others) at Shang Palace, Kowloon Shangri-La.
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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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.
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.
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.
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