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The vast majority of mitts, gauntlets and double oven gloves come in cotton; a few come in silicone (very heat resistant but also very difficult to manipulate) and in other flameproof materials. Let’s stick with the cotton ones. Most of the safety thinking has been done for you already, and you should therefore always look for British Standard mark on a product that you are considering buyin ...

Stir-up Sunday, which this year takes place on November 22nd, is not necessarily what you think it is. Not in its origins, at least. It seems to have been a tradition that was willed down to us by the Victorians, that first started with the book of Common Prayer, and the collect for the last Sunday before Advent, that ran: ‘Stir up we beseech thee, O Lord, the will of thy faithful people’. ...

As a knife supplier, we get asked this question surprisingly often, so we thought that it would be useful to give a summary. Obviously, the overarching concern must be safety, particularly where there are children regularly in the kitchen. But there are other factors, too, like convenience, cleanliness, knife care and price. Fundamentally, there are five ways to store your knives: magnetic ra ...

It’s a myth half as old as time itself, that giving a sharp object (and especially a knife) as a gift will bring bad luck. Specifically, so they say, the sharpness of the blade will ‘sever’ the ties of the friendship. Knives are not alone in being considered unlucky gifts in some cultures: handkerchiefs (waving goodbye to a relationship), shoes (a bringer of evil), clocks (calling for bad ...

One of the wonderful things about knives is that there seems to be one for just about any job you might do in a kitchen from shucking an oyster to slicing a wafer thin piece of sashimi, with about a hundred tasks in between. But a question that we get asked quite often is ‘why do cheese knives have holes in them?’ And a supplementary question is ‘why do some cheese knives turn up at the end ...

Admit it, they are never the most beautiful thing in your kitchen- those much-used and much-loved trays and dishes that are hidden away from view most of the time. They look old before their time, and always look like are starting their days work a little grubbier than they should be. Here’s some ideas for you. If the dish or tray has just been used to heat up, say, something simple like sc ...

So what exactly is the problem with plastic? Why are we so down on one of the most brilliant and versatile inventions of the last 15 years? Paradise beach in Thailand ruined by heavy plastic pollution. The real problem is that it never ‘dies’, never goes away. We (the human race) make 350 million tons of it a year, even though all the humans on earth don’t add up to 350 million tons. A ...

One of the great hoaxes ever pulled by a national broadcaster was pulled by the BBC’s Panorama programme on April Fool’s Day, 1957. The short piece followed a family in Ticino, Switzerland, and talked in detail about their spaghetti farm, including images of the spaghetti being harvested from the trees. The piece mentioned that the farm was benefiting from a mild winter, and from the disapp ...

For a number of reasons, the world’s insects have had a lousy century so far. Indeed, a 27 year long study in Germany came to the startling finding that over 70% of the flying insect biomass had disappeared from the study areas between 1986 and 2013. This matters. Taken together, the UK’s insect species perform vital work: they control pests, aerate the ground, remove waste, fertilise soil an ...