I've got my own opinion, but for diplomacy's sake I asked around and came up with a few other options for unglamorous but highly functional kitchen towels. Here they are:
• 1 My husband, who used to cook professionally, swears by these Ritz bar towels, which can be found by the hundreds in restaurant kitchens. They're terrycloth workhorses. $9.95 for a set of 5 at Cooking.com.
• 2 My personal favorite: Williams-Sonoma's Striped Towels. The waffle weave makes these both absorbent and durable. Yes, they're a bit more expensive than some of these other options, but you won't need to buy new towels for years; they'll transition nicely into rags when they're too ratty for the kitchen. $18 for a set of four.
• 3 If you want a simple workhorse but don't care for the feel of terrycloth, Crate and Barrel stocks a decent floursack dishtowel. They're good-sized, too, at 32" by 38". $9.95 for a set of three.
• 4 Microfiber towels are crazy-absorbent; for an economical option, try Costco's 20-pack for $28.99. (I hear certain Costco stores also carry basic bar towels and floursack towels.)
• 5 A friend is a devotee of these striped towels from Chefs Catalog. Like the Williams-Sonoma towels, they're basket-weave, but they're a bit more affordable, and the solid colors are festive. $12.99 for a set of three.
In general, here are some rules to live (and shop) by if you're looking for dish towels that absorb water well:
• Go cotton instead of linen. Linen tea towels are pretty hanging on a kitchen hook, but they don't do the job nearly as well as cotton towels.
• Look for a waffle or basket weave. Personally, I don't care for terrycloth towels in the kitchen, and a woven towel is the next best thing for absorbency.
• Wash your dish towels a few times before using them. This may seem wasteful, but it will help.
Got a favorite super-absorbent dish towel? Feel free to weigh in below!
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Cook's Illustrated recommends Now Designs Ripple Towel. It's 100% ribbed cotton and has 17% percent shrinkage.
dish towels that don't absorb are SO INFURIATING. A pet peeve of mine. Nice roundup.
For maximum absorbency, do not use fabric softener when washing towels (that goes for both the kitchen and bathroom). Fabric softener coats the fibres, which affects the fabric's ability to soak up water. If you want your towels to be nice and fluffy without using softeners, pop them in the dryer.
We use microfiber automotive towels around our house - cheap and effective, though not beautiful.
One thing I've learned about keeping your absorbent towels absorbent has to do with how you wash them. Bad laundering practice will turn a great towel useless in no time. This tip comes from advice my friends who cloth diaper (those also being also something you want to keep nice and absorbent). Detergent build-up will reduce absorption, and many detergents on the market contain "stain-blocking" additives that intentionally leave chemicals on fabrics for the purpose of reducing absorption. So, choose a lower-additive detergent, and don't use fabric softener! More info here with some recommendations for good detergents:
http://www.theclothdiaperwhisperer.com/2009/09/detergent-no-nos.html
Just read the label... 100% cotton and no prints.... done....
I tried varies models from Bed Bath and Beyond and Crate and Barrel. What has worked best for me are the cheapest tea towels, from IKEA. The more I wash them, the softer and more absorbent they become.
Waffle weaves suck! They just move around the water without absorbing anything. It seems counter-intuitive, but go for the flat weave you find in the old-world, French bar towels; they're fabulous and no lint!
I love the 50 cent towels from IKEA. The ones with the single red stripe.
We use the "medical waste" towels. Absorbent sponges and towels used in the OR are packed in 5s or 10s...but most of a time, there are a couple of spares. They are no longer sterile and can't be used in the hospital, but they are perfectly clean and SUPER absorbent. They make great towels, cleaning rags, painting rags...I really don't know what we'd do without them!
Oh, god, yes. There's nothing worse than a crap dishtowel. I have one, really excellent dishtowel in my kitchen that's been in my family for ages. It's lightweight cotton, very lightly textured, and it's about half the size of a bath towel. I carry it around the kitchen, draped over my shoulder, like a reliable old friend. I should steal it when I leave home.
I've recently made some 100% linen tea towels (couldn't find any affordable ones in the store), and I find them highly absorbent. Are cotton towels more absorbent?
I got sick of purchasing non-absorbing 100% cotton tea towels.
the costco ones leave little fibery things when you use them.
i used them for dishes dusting etc.. left a bunch of fiber clumps on whatever i did. even after multiple washes. :'(
I prefer linen. It absorbs better than cotton and doesn't leave lint behind. I might use a couple towels to dry a larger load of dishes but they dry out quickly, a major plus in a consistently humid climate. They also fit inside glasses and smaller items when a cotton towel wouldn't work.
I have some Crate and Barrel waffle weave cotton towels similar to their Salsa Stripe. They are great for drying my hands when working around the kitchen or drying large platters or bowls.
Another vote for the cheap IKEA towels: they are super-absorbent and indestructible!
Been using Crate and Barrel dishtowels since I left home 20 years ago. Have tried others, but always went back. Now I don't waste my money. CB is it for me.
Just use OLD towels! A lot of your aunts/mums/mothers in law will buy new ones as soon as their old towels get a bit ragged. Give them a second life and they will give you the dryest, brightest dishes & glasses.
Bar towels like the ones from Cooking.com are nice and absorbent, but they are not big enough. 17x20 is just not large enough to use as a proper side towel when cooking. You want something that can fold over an apron tie and still have enough length so that you can use it to grab a pot with it (without removing it from the apron string). 20x30 is about right.
Let me put in my vote for only using white towels in the kitchen. If you can't use your kitchen towels to mop up colorful liquids, or charred foodstuffs, then they just aren't nearly as useful as they could be (and you're likely going through a lot of paper towels instead). Just get white towels, so that you can bleach them. It'll make you a lot more willing to use your towels instead of paper towels.
Old-fashioned white cloth baby diapers. They're still sold in packs of 8-10 in the baby aisle at Target and other places. Absolutely nothing more absorbent, doesn't leave fibers on anything, and they last forever. My mom still has the ones she bought when she was first married. I keep a deep drawer full of them in the kitchen and use them instead of paper towels.
The first thing I thought when I saw this thread was the cheap IKEA towels. Clearly I wasn't the only one.
@Mamacita - we use diapers for dust clothes. They work wonderfully. I hadn't thought to use them for dish towels.
Here's another vote for the indestructible & wonderfully cheap IKEA towels!! I always grab a few when I happen to be at the store. You can never have too many.
For me, the best dish towels have always been my grandmother's -- and the traditionally manufactured ones that are available in the museum shop of Textilmuseum Bocholt in Germany (Textile museum in the west of Germany, not far from the Ruhr Area). They are sturdy and work really well (this kind of towel has always been used by coal miners).
Unfortunately, there is no English version of the page available, but here is the link for those who can read German and for the rest to look at the pictures ;o)
http://www.lwl.org/LWL/Kultur/wim/portal/S/bocholt/ort/shop/
Flour Sack Tea Towels! You can buy the simple white, in bulk for a minimal cost. Although, for a pinch more - you can get them in a variety of beautiful colours.
http://www.macys.com/catalog/product/index.ognc?ID=254796&BannerID=PD677&PartnerID=LINKSHARE&LinkshareID=jXot6eVeYJg-LSDChAUZm9Y2p7zGDvHgWw
if you know anyone who works in a hospital environment, surgical towels are fantastic! whenever there are unused leftovers from any sort of procedure, they have to be thrown out for sanitary reasons. such a waste!
I use the cheap IKEA towels, however they stain terribly! I can't ever seem to get a stain out of them. They all look so grungy. It's disappointing. They weren't absorbent when I first bought them, but washing a few times has definitely improved their absorbency.
I love the cloth diaper idea. I've never walked down the baby aisle at Target but I'll definitely try this.
My RN source switched jobs and I've worn out the few "medical waste" or surgical towels passed along to me. They were terrific.
Now I buy terry bar towels from Costco. A big pack lasts years. Around my house, one roll of paper towels will last a year since there's always a stack of bar rags handy.
Bad dishtowels are indeed a bane, but man...the stores sure get huge margins on them. There's no reason three little towels should cost $9-12 at Target. I'm gonna try the Ikea ones to see if they can penetrate my dishtowel curmudge.
As for staining, it might help to get the towel wet, wring it dry, then clean up the stain, rather than wiping with a dry towel. It seems to make a difference for me, and was the technique always used when I worked a pizza job all those years ago.
Seems to be a global problem these useless dish/teatowels! I've found sokaing them overnight in household vinegar has 2 advantages:
1. prevents the colours from running
2. removes the coating the manufacturers seem to soak everything in..
After this wash at a high temperature. This should improve the absorbancy quite a bit without ruining them.
Eva
EvaInNL: sokaing them overnight in household vinegar
I LOVE YOU! I was on my 10th... or maybe my 15th search for towels that would absorb some water. I have a ton of different kinds, cotton, linnen, etc. Even have paid a pretty penny for some "Super absorbent" kitchen towels, but they all were junk! They wouldn't even soak up a tiny drop of water!
At least I thought they were all junk... until I read your comment here. I had washed them many times, with and without detergent, but nothing helped, so I tried your idea with the vinegar last night.
Used one cup of vinegar and about a gallon of water for all my kitchen towels and soaked them all night, squeezed them out, and washed them with a half cup of baking soda this morning. Dried in the dryer without any dryersheet.
Viola!!! All of them absorb great! No more kitchen towel hunt for me.
It also worked wonders for my eyeglass cleaning cloths. I never thought about how much residue and such is in laundry detergent and how much the factory of towels puts stuff on the "absorbent" towels that makes them very un-absorbent.
Thank you!
Really happy to find this post and to read the endorsements of flour sack towels. They are very absorbent--and they also dry very quickly. (I soaked my new ones in vinegar as suggested above.)
This company sells floursack dish towels in colours, if you're like me and wanted to avoid the possibility of unsightly stains: http://www.simplysmartliving.com/The-Original-Floursack-100-Cotton-Dish-Towels--Set-of-3_p_112.html
One of the towels began to fray the end, and the above company gave me three replacements at no cost!
I found a cheap cotton terry towel which I use for all my cooking and cleanup in the kitchen as in other places around the house. They are not attractive so you might want to keep them in a drawer, but I just keep a pile on the counter so they are available. I also use a plastic bucket under the sink for soiled ones and when full tote it up to the laundry room. These are in the paint and cleaning section of Home Depot and run less than $10 for 24, sometimes cheaper on sale. I have lots of these and use them all the time until they fall apart then they go to the garage or garden and finally into my compost bin. I have used these for several years and would not use anything else. My fancy towels in the kitchen are only for display.
Drying with fabrics is left over from the days when dishes were wood and pots would rust. Dishes come out of the dishwasher dry enough for storage; ditto dishes and pots hand-washed and allowed to drop for a minute. I have stacks of cotton washcloths dedicated to kitchen wipe-up and semi-drying of pots and other hand-washable. And stacks of white bar cloths for grungier tasks. Cotton hand towels (not dish cloths) hang on the refrigerator handle for interim hand-wiping. The thinner the better. But not microfiber—my experience is that they HOLD a lot of water, but are too slow to pick it up. Even after many washings, a drop of water will bead on the surface before sinking in. I appreciate all the suggestions above, and will certainly try some.