The Best Grill Tongs

A good pair of grill tongs is essential for cooking outdoors. Unlike the 12-inch kitchen tongs we use for everyday tasks, grill tongs have especially long arms that keep your hands at a safe distance from the hot coals, wood, or flames, letting you grab, flip, and move pieces of food without burning yourself. But too often grill tongs have one of two big problems: They look like they were made for Paul Bunyan—huge, heavy, and chunky—or they’re too lightly built for serious grill work, with misaligned, flimsy arms and pathetic pincers. Either way, bad tongs make grilling harder than it should be, as they force you to fight for control over the food you’re cooking.

For this review, we tested a variety of tongs specifically designed for use with grills, each with arms measuring about 14 to 21 inches in length.

• 16-Inch Arms: While we expect grill tongs to keep our hands at a reasonable distance from the heat of the grill, we preferred models with arms on the shorter side of the spectrum, measuring about 16 inches. This length was enough to keep our hands out of harm’s way but provided better control than longer pairs, letting us pick up and rotate food without feeling like we were doing so with the proverbial 10-foot pole. Shorter arms provided better control but didn’t offer enough of a safety advantage over the kitchen tongs we’d otherwise use.

• Strong, Lightweight Construction: We liked tongs that were relatively lightweight, too, weighing 8 to 9 ounces. These were far less fatiguing to wield, especially for long sessions over a hot grill. But while they were light in weight, our top tongs weren’t slight of build; they were strong enough to pick up whole racks of ribs or butterflied chickens. And they were incredibly durable, resisting denting, dinging, and other mechanical issues. 

• Narrow Heads with Shallow Scalloped Edges: The best tongs had fairly narrow heads. These allowed us to pick up skinny or small items such as asparagus or even hot coals precisely, while still being substantial enough to grab larger foods as well. We also preferred heads that had shallow scalloped edges. These moderately scalloped edges gripped foods securely without tearing or gouging them.

• Moderate Tension: We preferred tongs that didn’t require a lot of effort to squeeze closed around food. These were easier to use for longer periods. 

• Grippy Handles: We preferred models that had rubbery overlays on their handles; these allowed us to keep our grip on them even when our hands were wet or greasy.

• Well-Designed Locking Mechanisms: We also liked tongs with locking mechanisms that could be easily opened. These effortlessly put the arms in a more compact position, keeping them tidier when we weren’t using them. While several models had locking mechanisms, not all were intuitive or easy to use. One model we tested had an invisible locking system that was operated by gently squeezing the arms while pointing down to unlock or up to lock. This seemed like a great idea in concept, but in practice the tongs sometimes popped open or locked shut at the wrong moments, and even after lots of practice we often had to pause and reposition them so they could open or close before use; it never became fully natural.

• Poorly Made or Heavy Tongs: Tongs that dented, rusted, or had parts that snapped off easily weren’t good investments. And tongs that were overly heavy, weighing more than 12 ounces, tired our hands.

• Large Heads: Tongs with large heads were clumsier to use and couldn’t pick up small pieces of food precisely.

• Heads with Serrated Edges: These ripped and gouged foods, leaving them unsightly or more likely to fall apart.

• High Tension: It was a pain to use tongs that required a lot of effort to squeeze closed, fatiguing our hands.