The Best Reusable Paper Towels
Equipment Review
We ran a slew of tests to find the most absorbent and durable dish towels.
Published Apr. 23, 2024.
The best dish towels are absorbent, durable, and easy to clean. They’re also thick without being bulky so that they can double as pot holders. We chose two cotton winners. The Williams Sonoma Classic Stripe Towels have a strong basket weave that easily soaks up big spills and effortlessly releases stains. The Now Designs Ripple Kitchen Towel, Set of 2 are supersoft and exceptionally absorbent. We also picked a favorite linen towel—the LinenVibe Pure Linen Tea Towels for Kitchen, Set of 2. These rustic towels are quick-drying and great for shining glassware and other delicate tasks.
Dish towels work hard in our kitchens. They dry our hands and dishes, sop up spills, cover bowls of dough as they proof, act as makeshift pot holders, and much more. There are many styles of dish towels, but most are made from cotton, linen, microfiber, or a blend of two or more materials. For this review, we narrowed our focus to towels made of 100 percent cotton or 100 percent linen so we could note any key distinctions between the two materials.
There is no one “best” material. Understanding the pros and cons of each makes it easier to pick a towel that suits your needs.
Regardless of material, we found that all the dish towels in our lineup had a couple things in common. First, they all shrank during testing. During manufacturing, a towel’s fibers are stretched tight, but once the towels have been washed, the fibers loosen and shrink back to their original state. You can also buy preshrunk towels, for which manufacturers preemptively shrink the material to reduce shrinkage when the towels are laundered at home. However, none of the towels shrank an unacceptable amount.
Second, most towels undergo some form of finishing treatment at the factory to make them m...
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Sawyer is an assistant digital editor for ATK Reviews. She worked at NBC as a researcher. Her favorite part of her job is learning and writing about African-American foodways.
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