The 10 Best Kitchen Towels
This wiki has been updated 21 times since it was first published in April of 2020. Whether you're cleaning hands, dishes, or countertops, no kitchen is complete without dedicated towels for drying. How you use kitchen towels matters to your health, and we want to remind you that they're a source of cross contamination when it comes to foodborne pathogens and other dangerous microbes. As such, it's always better to buy in bulk, so you can clean and rotate them often. When users buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn commissions to help fund the Wiki.
1. Aunti Em's Kitchen Vintage
2. DII Oversized
3. Utopia Towels Ring Spun
Editor's Notes
May 12, 2020:
For better or worse, kitchen towels fill a range of domestic roles, from decorative accent, to adhoc oven mitt. While this sort of versatility is the norm for kitchen towels in many homes, we strongly advise against their wide use due to the part they play in transmitting pathogens that can cause various forms of illness and food poisoning. Similarly, kitchen towels shouldn’t be used to hold or carry hot objects, as they are not created with this function in mind, and are therefore not properly insulated.
Instead of drying dishes with towels that might carry pathogens, we suggest having patience and using dish drying racks, or, if you must towel dry, using a fresh towel and cleaning it immediately after. Moving on, rather than grabbing hot pans with kitchen towels, we suggest using actual oven mitts and placing hot items on trivets. When it comes to storage, we strongly urge you to hang kitchen towels properly to ensure they’ll dry quickly and not attract mold or mildew. These concerns only represent a few we’d like to draw your attention to. At the end of the day, we hope you will do your own research and decide on what is best for your health and home.
While kitchen towels are used in many different ways, like a lot of towels, most of their function revolves around drying things. Just so, special preference is given to options that are highly absorbent but quick-drying like the Utopia Towels Ring Spun, Cotton Craft Basket Weave, and T-Fal Textiles Check Parquet. Meanwhile, although more decorative options such as the Urban Villa Premium Quality and the DII Oversized might place fashion before function, they are still included since they are some of the most absorbent and quick-drying in their subclass.
Special Honors
Native Organic Cotton If you're looking for kitchen towels that will leave less of a carbon footprint and are more socially sustainable, this manufacturer can help you along. All of their cotton is sourced from the United States and bought directly from farms, cutting out any middlemen. While their variety is limited, they also sell raw fabric which you can cut and hem your own towels from, which is simpler than it might sound, and will go a long way in helping the planet. To top it off, they use a portion of their profits to offset the CO2 emissions of their own international competitors. nativeorganic.com
Coyuchi There's no such thing as an indestructible towel, and very few places to recycle those towels which have passed their peak, so the majority of us end up throwing away quite a few feet of salvageable textile throughout our lives. This online service aims to end that with rotating subscriptions for household items such as bed sheets and bath towels that are made from the recycled fibers of discarded fabric. While they don't have anything in their current inventory specifically labeled kitchen towels, they do have hand towels that can easily be repurposed as such, and if there's enough public outreach, perhaps they'll be convinced to expand their line. coyuchi.com
4. Cotton Craft Basket Weave
5. Urban Villa Premium Quality
6. Aunt Martha's Vintage
7. KAF Home Pantry
8. Utopian Kitchen Flower Sack
9. Ritz Hanging Tie
10. T-Fal Textiles Check Parquet
Samuel Johnson Moyle is a writer residing in Portland, Oregon, with his artist wife and two jobless cats. In addition to researching for Ezvid Wiki, he assists students in Portland State University’s writing center, teaches college courses such as 222 Research Writing and 323 Writing as a Critical Inquiry, and does every front-of-house job imaginable at Portland’s most popular restaurant, where he has worked for over ten years. He earned his bachelor and TESOL certification at Portland State before heading to Tokyo to teach ESL and later returned to his alma mater to earn his master’s in English as a fully funded graduate assistant. His range of job and life experiences grant him expertise in categories including camping, outdoors, pets, furniture, and more.