Nigella Lawson sparks great practicality debate over use of 'CSI gloves'

Faffy or sensible in the kitchen?

Nigella prepares a sticky dish with the help of her gloves on Simply Nigella (BBC)

Rarely does an episode of Simply Nigella air without sparking nationwide debate (Is avocado on toast really that hard to make? Is that egg on warm lettuce actually tasty?). This week, it’s the turn of those famous ‘CSI gloves’.

Celebrity chef Nigella Lawson has made no secret of her passion for using gloves when cooking and Monday night saw her push their virtues once again. Named after hit TV series Crime Scene Investigation, her ‘CSI gloves’ are reached for whenever messy or potentially irritant dishes are involved.

However, when the 55-year-old donned said gloves twice while preparing an Asian chilli rib recipe, fans and experts soon began questioning their practicality in the kitchen and calling her “faffy”.

“Lift out the hard layer of fat. I glove up for this and it is a job I adore,” she said before grabbing the gloves to remove meat from the bone and later to scrape off fat.

Lawson also used her gloves when making breakfast bars in an earlier episode and raves about them in her book Nigella Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home.

“I like to keep a packet of disposable gloves (referred to in these pages as CSI gloves) by my washing-up paraphernalia,” she wrote. “You can wear these before prodding hot joints of meat or dismembering roast chicken as well as shredding cold meat.

“I wear them for peeling blanched tomatoes and while I chop these, too, as the gloves stop my hands getting sore from the acid. They’re a must for any beetroot preparation. Once you start using them, you’d be surprised how often you find them invaluable.”

Nigella Lawson's controversial Caesar salad from an earlier episode (BBC)

Lucy Jackman from the British Dietetic Association told the Daily Mail that wearing gloves could be a risk when cutting “slippery food” as you “might be more likely to cut yourself”.