All products featured on Epicurious are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
There are certain things in my kitchen I simply cannot have enough of: good, salty dark chocolate, Nordic Ware sheet pans, and, most of all, kitchen towels.
No matter how high my stack of dish towels and tea towels is on Sunday, they seem to fly right through their myriad tasks and into the laundry bin at record speed. Each week I curse the mismatched socks and the pile of towels that fill the washer. And each week, I think about getting more towels, if only to spread out the wash days a bit.
It’s no wonder I can’t seem to have enough towels; I use them for pretty much everything. Beyond sopping up spills and protecting bare fingers from the handle of a hot pan, I also use kitchen towels for drying and storing lettuce and tender greens. After rinsing, I lay my greens out on a clean towel to air-dry, or I wrap them in a slightly damp towel and place them in my crisper drawer.
And that’s just how I use the highly absorbent cotton ones—the ones I don’t mind mucking up. The gorgeous washed linen ones, the hand-embroidered ones, the ones with cute sayings that wouldn’t absorb much more than a tablespoon’s worth of spilled sauce if given the chance—those are important too. These prettier varieties, sometimes called tea towels, sometimes called dish towels, can be used to dab the clean salad bowl dry, or to dry your hands. Bring them to the table and use them as a napkin in a pinch. I like to store these guys in plain sight, hanging from a hook or from my oven handle.
Yes, one’s showier and one’s a bit more versatile, but I won’t pick favorites and neither should you—every kitchen deserves them both. If you, like me, are looking to upgrade your kitchen towel setup, here are some favorites in each category.
The workhorse towels
No-nonsense Zeppoli dish towels and plain white flour sack towels are favorites of the service industry, and for good reason. They’re highly absorbent and cost about $1 each. If you only need a few (or just want your kitchen towels to look a teeny bit less utilitarian), these other three options are a bit larger, weightier, and, well, prettier.
The dish towels
These pretty things are ideal for light drying jobs (dishes and hands, not a gallon of spilled milk). While they’re a bit more precious, they’re certainly far from useless: These sets can double as napkins and sit folded by the bar once you can have people over for drinks again. Some of these towels, like the first set from Caraway, are actually highly absorbent and can be used like kitchen towels—we just think they’re so pretty that we’d want to keep them safe from stains.
