8 Best Tongs of 2026

One pair, nine inches, and not a scrap of silicone on it. Against the sets here that hand you two or three lengths, that reads as the stingy choice — until you pick it up. The brushed stainless has more heft than the price suggests, and the soft grips sit under your thumb and forefinger instead of somewhere near them, which is the whole difference on a wet-handed night.

That build is why we call it the best-made tong in this group. Everything about it feels settled — the scallops are cut deep, the grips land where your fingers do, and nothing rattles when you shake it. The lock shuts with a click and stays shut in a drawer, the whole thing is dishwasher safe, and OXO backs it with a repair-or-replace guarantee you rarely see attached to a utensil.

The limit is length. Nine inches is right at the stove and fine for serving, but leaning over a hot grill with it puts your knuckles closer to the coals than you’ll want, and there’s no second, longer pair in the box. If you want one very good tong for pan work rather than a set that covers everything, this is the one we point to.

The question that decides most tong purchases is what’s in the pan. If it’s a coated skillet — nonstick, ceramic, enamel — bare steel is the wrong tool no matter how well it grips, and that is the gap this pair fills. Both tongs carry scalloped silicone tips rated to 600 °F, which is hotter than a nonstick pan should ever get.

What we didn’t expect was how much the soft tips would still pick up. Scalloped silicone closes around small, awkward things — tater tots out of an air fryer basket, a rasher of bacon, cherry tomatoes — and the food doesn’t skate out sideways the way it can with a flat-edged silicone head. The 9-inch and 12-inch lengths cover the pan and the grill, and the cushioned handles have a thumb rest that keeps them controllable when your hands are slick.

This is the set we point nonstick owners to. The trade-off is that silicone is a cushion, not a blade: for lifting a heavy roast out of a Dutch oven, steel is surer, and no heat rating changes that. For everything you’d normally do in a coated pan, these are simply the safer pair to reach for.

Seventeen inches is a lot of tong until you’re standing at a kettle grill with the lid off and the coals flaring. Then the extra reach is the difference between turning a chicken leg and pulling your hand back, and it’s why this is the pair that goes outside with us. The stainless is brushed and rated to 600 °F, and at 191 g it’s light enough to work one-handed while the other hand holds a platter.

The rest of the design is quietly sensible. Silicone strips set into the handle give your thumb somewhere to sit, the pull ring locks the jaws shut for storage, and the spring is softer than most — which matters when you’re turning thirty pieces of chicken and your forearm starts to complain. The jaws open wide enough to take a whole bird, and there’s no flex in the arms when you lift one. It stays by the grill, though: 17 inches is too much leverage for turning an egg, and the stove wants a 9-inch pair.

There’s no spring in these. The arms pivot at the top like a pair of scissors, so the jaws open when your hand opens and close only while you squeeze. The handles are soft-touch silicone over reinforced nylon, deep enough that your fingers sit inside them rather than on top, and the 304 stainless arms come in 10 and 12 inches.

That layout gave us the most restful grip in this group. Spring tongs ask your hand to work against them on every squeeze, and over a long session at the stove that adds up; with these you close when you need to and relax in between. For anyone whose hands tire or ache, that is the difference between tongs you use and tongs you avoid.

The habit to learn is that they don’t clamp on their own. Set them down mid-task and the jaws sit open, so you squeeze to hold, every time — no lock, no spring, no helping hand. Once that’s automatic they are a pleasure to serve with: deep handles, a wide opening for big hands, and a positive clamp on a salad or a chop.

This is the most expensive set on the page, and it doesn’t try to justify that with features. What you get is two polished stainless tongs, 7 and 9 inches, scalloped at the tips, with a matched finish that looks deliberate hanging on a rail rather than a pair that ended up together in a blister pack.

The lock is the best-realized part. Instead of the sliding collar a lot of tongs use, KitchenAid puts a push-pull ring at the end, and it’s quicker to work and less likely to creep open in a drawer — the kind of small difference you notice every time you put them away. It’s the mechanism we rate highest here.

Where it will divide people is the spring. This pair takes real pressure to close, and the payoff is a very positive grip once it’s shut. Strong hands will like it; weaker ones won’t. Anyone with arthritis or a light grip will find the squeeze tiring after a pan of bacon, and the scissor tongs above are the kinder answer.

So this is a good-looking, well-finished pair at a premium, with a heavier action than anything else here. We rate it near the top of this set on finish and on the lock, and near the bottom on hand comfort — which makes it a buy for a strong-handed cook who wants one set on the rail.

The third tong is the point. Seven inches is short enough to work inside an air fryer basket or a saucepan without the handle levering against the rim, and few sets here bother with one. You get 7, 9 and 12 inches in a single box, which is enough that one can live in the drawer, one by the stove and one with the grill gear.

The build is plainer than the price suggests and better than it needs to be: 1 mm stainless formed in one piece, so there’s no joint at the head to trap grease, and silicone cushions set into the sides of the handles rather than molded around them. Those inserts pop out for washing and press back in, which is the detail you appreciate the first time you clean a sticky pair. All three are rated to 600 °F and go in the dishwasher.

For a kitchen that cooks most nights, the spread of sizes does more work than any single premium pair, because you stop improvising with the wrong length. The 12-inch is the one we use least, and even that earns its place at the grill.

Three tongs and a spatula in one box is a different proposition from the single pairs here, and for a kitchen with an empty utensil drawer it’s the more useful purchase. The set runs 7, 9 and 12 inches, all with scalloped silicone tips and a pull-ring lock, plus a silicone spatula that turns out to be the piece you reach for while the tongs are in the sink.

Build quality holds up better than the price bracket suggests: 1 mm 304 stainless, one-piece arms, and silicone tips that grip a tomato instead of skating across it. Everything is dishwasher safe, and the hanging loops mean they can live on a rail rather than in a drawer.

Three tongs changes the rhythm of a normal week more than you might expect: there’s always a clean one, the 7-inch fits a saucepan and a lunch plate, and the 12-inch takes over when the grill is lit. The silicone tips also make this a workable choice for coated cookware.

We suggest it as a starter bundle rather than an upgrade: four dishwasher-safe pieces that outfit a first kitchen completely. Nobody’s first set of tongs needs to be the last one they buy.