Questions and answers

Everything below is answered from the listing data behind the 35 products in this catalogue. Where the listings contradict each other, the answer says so instead of picking the more flattering reading. Anything about a specific order belongs with Amazon, which holds it — see Shipping and Returns.

Do you sell these, or does Amazon?

Amazon. This site is a catalogue: it describes the range and links to the listing where each item is sold. It holds no stock, takes no payment and never sees your order. Every buy button opens an Amazon page, and from that point the price, the delivery and the return are Amazon’s.

The site earns a commission on qualifying purchases made through those links, at no extra cost to you. That is disclosed in the footer of every page and explained on About.

Which cuff length should I buy, 13.7 or 14.7 inches?

Those are the only two lengths in the range, and they split the fourteen mitts eight at 13.7 inches and six at 14.7 inches. The number is the whole mitt from fingertip to cuff, so the difference of one inch is one inch of extra forearm cover — modest on paper, and it lands exactly where oven burns usually do, on the inside of the forearm from brushing a shelf while reaching to the back.

So the deciding factor is your oven, not your budget. Shallow oven, middle shelf, mostly baking: the shorter one is the better tool because you will actually put it on. Deep oven, roasting tins, or a grill you reach across: take the longer one. The extra-long pairs also carry the same 8.9-inch width, so they are not bulkier in the hand — only longer.

Why does no page here give a heat rating in degrees?

Because the listings cannot agree on one. Five of them promise one figure in the product title and a lower figure in the bullet points on the same page. Not two different listings — the same listing, contradicting itself, with a gap of fifty degrees between the two claims.

Printing either number would mean choosing which half of the source to believe, and the higher one is the one that sells better, which is exactly why it should not be trusted by default. So the site prints no temperature anywhere and describes heat resistance in words. If you need a figure for a specific pair, read it off that pair’s Amazon page and note that the title and the bullets may not match.

Can these go in the washing machine?

It depends on the item, and not in the way you would guess. There is no rule of the form “mitts wash, pot holders do not”: thirty-four of these listings state a care instruction and give eight different ones between them. Two colours of the same pocketed pot holder are marked machine wash while three colours of it are marked hand wash only, and one pair of mitts asks for a damp cloth and offers no machine cycle at all.

For that reason every product page prints the care line from that item’s own listing, word for word, in the specification table — and the description never generalises from the category. Check the row on the page of the exact colour you are buying. Whatever the label says, silicone does not absorb, so warm water and dish soap deal with ordinary use; it is the machine cycle that varies.

How many pieces come in a set?

Three answers across the catalogue: twenty come as a pair, six as a three-piece set, nine as a four-piece set. Pairs are the mitts, the pot holders and the door mats; the threes are the graduated cutting board sets; the fours are the mitt-and-trivet and mitt-and-holder sets, which are two of each.

This is one of the places the source data is unreliable, so it is worth saying how the number is arrived at. Several listings give a piece count in their specification fields that contradicts their own product name — in the worst case a set called “Set of 4” has both its numeric fields filled in as 1. The count on this site is therefore read from the product name, which was checked against the specification fields for all thirty-five items: they agree everywhere except that one listing, where the name is right.

Why do different colours show the same number of ratings?

Because Amazon does not count them separately. Colour variants of one product share a single rating counter, so the black and the grey version of the same mitt legitimately display the same star average and the same total — those ratings were left across all the colours together and cannot be split apart.

It has a consequence for any total. Across the thirty-five pages here there are only seven distinct rating figures, so adding up all thirty-five would count the same reviews several times over and produce a number several times too large. Where this site gives a total it adds only the distinct counts, which comes to 106,115.

What is the difference between a pot holder and a mitt here?

A mitt is for getting a hand inside a hot enclosed space: the hazard is the shelf edge and the oven roof rather than the dish, which is why cuff length is the specification that matters. A pocketed pot holder is a flat square with a split fingertip pocket, for hob work — lifting lids, shifting pans — where pulling a mitt on and off ten times is the slower option.

The pot holders also lie flat as trivets, which is the reason to own a pair even if you already have mitts. They are the cheapest things in the catalogue at $9.99 to $14.99, against $12.74 to $19.79 for the mitts. No pot holder protects a forearm, though, so for deep oven work the answer is a mitt regardless of price.

Which cutting board set should I choose?

The six sets are each three graduated boards in food-grade polypropylene, reversible, with a juice groove on both faces, and five of the six are identical in size at 15.39 by 11.1 inches and 0.91 inches thick — the difference is colour. Colour is worth choosing deliberately rather than decoratively: professional kitchens code red for raw meat and blue for raw fish, and a coloured board carries that instruction without anyone having to remember it.

Two sets are genuine exceptions. The two-tone grey set is narrower and thicker at 15.75 by 8.46 inches and 1.1 inches thick, which suits a shallow worktop or anyone who dislikes a board that flexes. And the red set is the one listed hand wash only, where the others are listed dishwasher safe — relevant precisely because red is the set you would use for raw chicken.

Are the prices on this site current?

They were read from the listings at the last rebuild of the site, in US dollars, before tax and postage. Amazon prices move without notice, so treat the figures here as a guide to what the range costs — $9.99 to $29.99 across the whole catalogue — rather than as a quotation.

The binding price is the one on the Amazon page when you order. If a figure here has drifted a long way from the listing, that is worth telling us at [email protected], because it means the site needs rebuilding.

Why is a size or a feature list missing from some pages?

Because it was missing or wrong at the source, and the alternative to omitting it was inventing it. Two listings have their dimensions field filled with a stand-in value instead of a measurement — the same field on other colours of the same product gives a real size, which is how you can tell it is an unfilled field rather than a tiny product. Those rows are dropped rather than printed.

One listing is stranger: its bullet points describe a cover for a billiard table, text that has leaked in from an unrelated product. Another has a single bullet that only repeats its own title. Nothing from either is used as a source of fact; those two pages are written from the product name, the specification fields and the products next to them in the range. The rules behind all of this are set out on About.