i have one pair of those thin latex gloves in my kitchen. i just wash thoroughly with soap and re-use. they're great for peeling beets, cutting hot peppers, etc. is it really necessary to discard them after one use?

If you want to serve food to people, I would say to not use latex gloves. Some people are very allergic to it and not know about it.

You can use cloth gardening gloves that are only for the kitchen. Your fingers may still be slightly tinged but I think the cloth would absorb most of dyes or oils.

For beets I usually roast them and can get the skin off with a paper towel and not touch the beet but I've also used reusable thick dishwashing/ cleaning gloves. Otherwise I just make sure to wash my hands well before and after touching staining or icky things.

I've also been cutting back on similar materials in my kitchen for the same reasons. For beets, I stick a fork in the roasted beet and rub off the peel with a grapefruit spoon, works fine for me. For peppers, I found that the prep gloves didn't work, making chili for 600 people once I still got burned through gloves (no visible holes and I changed gloves frequently) so since I tend to work in large quantity I use a dedicated food processor ($15 at the thrift shop).

Yeah I've never even heard of this.. what happened to just washing your hands thoroughly before you start handling the foods?

That said, I would consider it only for dealing with garlic.. that smell stays on my hand for min. 1 week, no matter what I try (lemon juice makes it tolerable but I can still smell it!). But even then, to me it seems a little silly.

I use them occasionally if I'm trying to avoid dying my hands (beets), or if I have a cut that I'm trying to keep clean and dry - and out of contact with other people's food.

I like the latex glove idea (keeping in mind allergy issues, as jchen mentioned) and may try it. We do use them for hand-washing dishes in the winter to save our hands, but I'm not sure they'd be as comfortable to cook with.

@AlisonCJ, get rid of garlic smell by rubbing your fingers on stainless steel. there was an article about this at some point on here. works like a charm! i just rub my hands all over my kettle after garlic.

Never never! If I'm doing something messy (like beets or more common for me- coloring fondant with food coloring by hand) I take the dirty hands and wear them as a badge of honor for a day or so.

I know tons of people who glove up to touch chicken or fish but why? Soap and water after and its all gone. You don't wrap your cutting board in plastic wrap every time you cook one of these things so why worry about your uber-washable hands?

For smells or something like cutting peppers, I just try not to handle things too bad but even so, its not the end of the world to me to smell like garlic for a bit.

I use these gloves for chopping onions. With onions the smell gets into my skin and stays for a week, making it impossible to change my contact lenses. I've tried rubbing my hands on stainless steel, but it does not work for me. The gloves work perfectly.

To minimise waste, I tend to chop several onions (sliced, diced, etc) all at once and place each cut in a ziplock bag in the freezer, then I just add whatever I need directly from the bag to the pot without touching it. Yes, it adds a little water from the freezing, but I have never had a problem with this.

You have to peel beets?

The only time I use them is when I have to seed and chop a lot of jalapeños. I've made the mistake of rubbing my eyes after doing that one too many times.

I like the gardening gloves idea I have some with some kind of coating that i use for gardening. But I like to get my hands messy that's the fun. Unless its garlic which I have unitaskers just or garlic so I don't have to touch. Hot peppers I just mess with them very carefully.

I use gloves only if I have to chop a lot of hot peppers - when I'm canning pepper jelly or salsa, for example. It's not a problem to avoid excessive skin contact with smaller quantities, but if I'm chopping habaneros by the cupful, a bit of extra protection goes a long, long way. For anything else, I think that a thorough hand-washing (before and after!) is perfectly sufficient; if my fingers are pink from chopping beets, well, chances are I'm not planning on going out anywhere that night anyhow!

For a really messy job (though I cannot think of one) I'd just use the regular rubber gloves I have around for dishwashing. I can't imagine buying surgical type gloves for home use because I really try very sincerely to use as few disposables as possible (and yes, in our world it's very difficult).

And I consider beet stains a badge of honor!

I used them while pitting cherries & canning beets. The only reason I have gloves around is because I get *nasty* chemical burns from even the lowliest chile pepper. The mouth loves 'em... the hands don't!

Absolutely not! And I despise fast food restaurants that use them. They give a false sense of cleanliness when the gloves are only going to be as clean as your hands. Dirty hands=dirty gloves.

I hate using gloves when I am working with my hands. It makes me feel so removed from what I am doing. You rely on tactile feedback a lot when you are cooking.

"And I consider beet stains a badge of honor!"

YES!

I have a box of nitrile gloves, courtesy of an old roommate who picked them up in research lab. I only use them when I make char siu with red food coloring (I like it bright red and lucky like the char siu i grew up with) which would dye my hands.

Not specifically "food prep gloves" but just plain latex gloves.

The only times I ever wear gloves is when I have a bandaid/cut of some sort on my hand and I don't want to contaminate food.

Hello? Raw meat? That's the only time I use them and I just ask the butcher to loan me a pair. If people are worried about latex allergies, they shouldn't eat out. I have worked in restaurants for years and we always use gloves. And! Dirty hands do not equal dirty gloves and any good place will not be dirty. Hands are required to be cleaned before gloves and be glad for the gloves- fingernails are gross and if you cut your hand through the glove it is less likely to contaminate anything. Also. Rubbing your hands with oil before touching beets or peppers or garlic will help with the color/sting/smell come off with soapy water.

Only if I'm chopping a ton of spicy peppers. I learned this the hard way - the skin around my fingernails BURNS LIKE FIRE if overexposed, and dipping them in milk only helps so much.

I'd probably also use them if I ever decided to juice two giant boxes of oranges again - my hands weren't exactly happy with me after that.

For chopping very hot peppers, and even then only on the hand that isn't holding the knife (the knife hand isn't touching the pepper). I get a really bad chemical burn otherwise. I'm allergic to latex, but I've had the same box of vinyl gloves for at least five years and it still looks full. I do a LOT to eliminate waste, so I'm just not going to lose sleep over a glove now and then.

SoonerScotty is exactly right about gloves giving the wearer a false sense of security about cleanliness. So many times, I've seen food prep staff handle money or other germy items, then return to handling food without washing or changing gloves. "It's okay, I'm wearing gloves!"

I never use them

I gave my mom a pair of silicon gloves so she may bake all the wonderful date & nut cookies (that must be rolled hot) we wish for without pain for her lovely hands :)

Sometimes I use them when handling raw chicken. I'm a little unreasonable when it comes to chicken... I wouldn't cook it for years because I didn't have a dishwasher to sanitize everything afterward. I'm not a huge clean-freak, so I'm not sure why chicken makes me so crazy.

I should have added to my post that for getting cooking smells off your hands nothing beats Napa Valley Soap Company's "Chef's Soap", however, it won't eliminate the dye-effect from beets OR all the capsaicin from peppers (just smells like onions, fish, etc).

I never use them for cooking, and only when I absolutely have to in the lab where I'm doing my PhD research - they make my hands smell of plastic or rubber whether I use latex, nitrile or polyethylene.

If you want to buy some you can reuse, I'd go for polyethylene ones, they're usually studier than the other type and easier to reuse.

We have nitrile gloves and I've only used them in my home kitchen for cleaning nettles and cutting hot peppers.

I like dying my hands when prepping foods, and have never been squimish about touching raw meat.

Allergic to latex. But there's something about wearing gloves while preparing food that seems gross to me. Maybe because I worked at Subway 15 years ago.

Nitrile and vinyl gloves smell weird and I don't want that in my food.