Grill Maestro

Ultimate Tongs huh? That’s quite a pronouncement for an accessory, don’t you think? Well, the Ultimate Tongs are better than your average tongs and at a MSRP of nearly $20, they better be.

Here are some very useful features you won’t find in your regular crap metal tongs:

• A one-hand locking mechanism that keeps the tons closed.
• The tongs have teeth!
• One side is made of stainless steel and the other is a high temperature plastic. The stainless steel side is for the grill and the high temperature plastic side is for any non-stick surfaces, like pans sitting on a side burner.

My first concern was the “high temperature plastic” part because when I use tongs, I generally don’t pay attention to which side touches the grill so I was a little worried I’d touch the plastic side and melt it on the grill. Well, turns out I did touch it a couple times but it didn’t melt, even when the grill was running close to 400 degrees. I actually was using it as normal and mistakenly thought some stuck food (burger meat) was burned plastic but it cleaned right off (whew!). So, I can give an endorsement that the plastic won’t melt if it comes into contact with the grates.

As for my other thoughts, I think the tongs flex a bit too much so you have to give it a really good grip if you want to flip something that’s somewhere around 5 lb. If I were designing it then I’d put a little more reinforcement on the thing so that I wouldn’t have to grip it so far down towards the teeth.

Otherwise though it’s a pretty solid set of tongs.