Best BBQ tongs

Everyone loves a sunny outdoor feast with friends and family, but a pair of bad BBQ tongs can make a fun occasion more stressful, as well as lead to poorly cooked food or singed skin and hair on the back of your hands.

In April 2021, we tested eight tongs ranging in price from £5 to £34 and found two excellent pairs that we think would enhance any BBQ or make a fantastic gift.

See below for our pick of the best.

Prices and availability last checked 25 April 2022.

If you're entertaining more outdoors this summer, why not consider a Best Buy BBQ?

Best BBQ tongs

Everdure Premium BBQ Tweezers (Large), Editor's Choice

Cheapest price: £28.79 available at BBQ World.

Length: 39.7cm Span: 9.5cm Weight: 434g

Pros: Good grip and dexterity on any type and size of BBQ food, comfortable in the hand, high-quality build, look great.

Cons: Harder to pinch together than some and can make your hand tired, expensive.

Verdict: These tongs can do everything

Whether you're turning sausages, picking up bits of asparagus that have fallen through the grill, flipping a spatchcocked chicken or adjusting coals, these Everdure Premium BBQ tweezers can handle it. They're also long enough to keep your hand away from all but the fiercest heat.

They also look and feel fantastic in your hand, and it's clear they're a well-made pair of tongs.

One slight negative is that because of their tweezer design and sturdy build, they take a little more effort to squeeze than many of the tongs we tested. This could mean that your hand starts to get tired if you're using them for long periods.

They're also expensive, but we think they'd make a fantastic gift for any BBQ enthusiast.

Weber Premium Tongs, Editor's Choice

Cheapest price: £18 available at Amazon, BBQ World, B&Q and Weber.

Length: 43.2cm Span: 16.2cm Weight: 352g

Pros: Perfect BBQ companion for any type of food big or small, comfortable in the hand, wide span makes it easy to pick up any item or adjust coals

Cons: Hard to clean by hand when food is dried on, quite bulky so could be difficult to store

Verdict: We love these tongs as they're a real all-rounder 

Despite the bulky appearance, these Weber Premium Tongs are just as good at the dexterous jobs, such as picking up cherry tomatoes, adjusting asparagus spears or turning sausages, as they are when flipping steaks or a spatchcocked chicken.

They're comfortable in your hand, take hardly any effort to use and have a wide span when fully open.

The corrugated design of the tips makes them brilliant at gripping almost any type of food, but it does make them slightly more difficult to clean by hand as a result. They're the bulkiest tongs we tested, so might be difficult to store when not in use.

How the rest fared

The tongs below didn't quite do well enough for us to recommend and are listed in alphabetical order.

Big Green Egg Custom Stainless Steel Tongs

Cheapest price: £34 available at thebbqshop

Length: 41.5cm Span: 9.5cm Weight: 442g

Pros: Good enough for turning sausages and flipping burgers, as they're long they keep your hand away from the heat

Cons: Narrow span makes adjusting some food difficult, cold to the touch, expensive

Verdict: We found better for less

Our testers found these Big Green Egg tongs very cold to the touch, even on a warm sunny day. The stainless steel design may look appealing, but it does have its drawbacks when it comes to comfort and feel.

These tongs don't have a very wide span, less than 10cm, so they're not wide enough to pick up a large prawn from every angle.

You won't have any issues turning a sausage or flipping a burger and they're long enough to keep your hand away from the heat. However for the price, we think they should be good at eerything.

Cuisipro Silicone Locking Tongs

Cheapest price: £12.49 available at Amazon and Lakeland 

Length: 23cm Span: 10cm Weight: 134g

Pros: Good control on small food items, such as asparagus spears, prawns or cherry tomatoes, small and compact for storage.

Cons: Too short to use safely on a hot BBQ

Verdict: OK for smaller items

These tongs are great for small food items such as asparagus, cherry tomatoes and prawns. But they're far too short to be suitable for anything much bigger.

The grip these tongs give is fine, however you just can't get close enough to the meat or veg on the BBQ without getting your hand singed. And adjusting coals with these would certainly be too risky.

These could be a decent second pair of tongs for small veg and fish items, but for that we think they're a little overpriced.

Extodry Sturdy BBQ Tongs

Cheapest price: £8.97 available at Amazon.

Length: 30cm Span: 16cm Weight: 134g

Pros: Comfortable wooden grip, easy to store, attractive price, good for smaller food items

Cons: Too short so your hand gets hot, not very suitable for adjusting coals or flipping large items such as a spatchcocked chicken

Verdict: The short length means you might end up singed

Considering the cost, these could be a decent second pair of tongs for some of the more dextrous BBQ tasks that shorter tongs are best for, such as moving asparagus or cherry tomatoes around. They have a lovely wide span and a comfortable wooden handle. They'd store away relatively easily in a kitchen drawer.

But they're still a bit on the short side for some of the more common tasks such as adjusting coals or turning sausages on a really hot BBQ. You might get a few singed hand hairs, and you'll certainly feel the heat of the BBQ more than with our top picks.

John Lewis & Partners Stainless Steel BBQ Tongs

Cheapest price: £8 available at John Lewis & Partners

Length: 40.5cm Span: 29cm Weight: 201g

Pros: Long handle, comfortable grip, wide span makes them versatile, good for adjusting coals or any type of BBQ food

Cons: Tendency to try to spring open wide requires constant adjustment

Verdict: Great tongs

This pair from John Lewis & Partners have a long handle, a comfortable grip and the widest span of any of the tongs we tested. They stretch almost as wide as a full-length ruler.

These tongs can do pretty much anything, including adjusting coals, flipping larger items such as steaks, chicken and burgers, and they're dexterous enough to handle delicate food such as halloumi and asparagus, too.

The tongs only just missed out on our Editor's Choice recommendation because of their tendency to want to spring open very wide, all of the time. This wide span makes them very versatile, but it does need constant control and adjustment, which can become tiresome.

Napoleon Precision Tweezer Tongs

Cheapest price: £22.79 available at thebbqshop and The BBQ Store

Length: 41.5cm Span: 6cm Weight: 235g

Pros: Brilliant for small food items, comfortable to hold, long enough to keep your hand away from the heat

Cons: Very poor for flipping large bits of meat, pierced a sausage in our tests, not very versatile

Verdict: Good for what they're designed for – small food items

These precision tongs might turn heads at your next BBQ, but they're unlikely to be capable of turning large bits of meat, such as a T-bone steak or a spatchcocked chicken.

But then these tongs are specifically designed for smaller bits food, such as cherry tomatoes, prawns or asparagus spears, and does this job well.

Our issue with them is that even when it comes to common BBQ food such as burgers and sausages, they disappointed us. These tongs inadvertently lanced a sausage, flipping burgers was very tricky, and the tongs even bent and deformed at their hinge when we tried to turn a spatchcocked chicken.

They're attractive to look at, comfortable to hold and great with small food items, but they're certainly not the whole package.

ProCook Stainless Steel Tongs

Cheapest price: £5 available at ProCook

Length: 34cm Span: 15.6cm Weight: 146g

Pros: Great control when handling small food items, comfortable grip

Cons: A little on the short side

Verdict: Better off paying a little more for the similar John Lewis & Partners pair

These ProCook BBQ tongs are practically identical in design to the John Lewis & Partners tongs, but they're 6.5cm shorter, so we'd recommend paying the £3 extra for the length you get with this version.

The tongs have a comfortable grip and a wide span. They're very good for picking up smaller food items such as tomatoes, asparagus and prawns, and decent for common tasks such as flipping burgers and sausages.

But as the tongs are a fair bit shorter, your hand can overheat if the BBQ is really hot, so we wouldn't recommend them over the longer John Lewis & Partners version.

Wine clubs compared

Four things to know before buying BBQ tongs

1. Length matters. If you don't want to burn your hands, regardless of the size of your BBQ (we used two different sizes in our tests), you'll need a long tong. Anything shorter than 35cm can start to feel uncomfortable when the BBQ is really hot.
2. Traditional-style tongs, with ends that look a bit like fluffy clouds, can be purchased very cheaply, and they do the job pretty well. We'd recommend the John Lewis & Partners set above as a great budget option. But paying a bit more can get you tongs that look a bit fancier (for a great gift) and, in the case of our Editor's Choice, tongs that really can do everything.
3. Tweezer tongs can be a bit hit and miss. We tested two tweezer-style tongs and our testers loved one (Everdure), but found the Napoleon tweezer tongs disappointing.
4. Consider buying two pairs for your BBQ. A cheaper long-handled set to adjust coals and perhaps one of our more expensive Editor's Choice tongs to deal with different types of food.

How we tested BBQ tongs

The perfect set of tongs should be able to handle any type of BBQ food, big or small, as well as be suitable for adjusting coals.

The tongs should be comfortable to hold, keep your hands away from excessive heat and be durable.

Our researchers tested and rated each of the tongs over two different-sized BBQs.

A spatchcocked chicken, steaks, sausages, veggie burgers, asparagus, a large piece of fish, prawns, halloumi and cherry tomatoes were all prodded and flipped to identify the best pairs.

The tongs were tested on two different-sized BBQs – one big (70cm circumference) and one small (50cm).

As well as how they dealt with food, we rated how easy each set of tongs is to clean. And to check they're durable, we dropped them all 10 times on a patio to see how they held up. While some showed cosmetic scratches, all still worked perfectly after being dropped.