The Best Kitchen Towels to Dry Your Dishes, Hands, and Countertops

Choosing a kitchen towel should be a simple thing. It just needs to dry stuff off. How hard can that be? After testing close to a dozen different towels, I can say with confidence that it’s easy to end up with lackluster results. And that’s not something you should accept because there are some truly excellent kitchen towels out there.

It’s not that any of the towels I tested were terrible, it’s just that some were great and some were…not. They dried slowly or got waterlogged or just always gave off a gross mildew smell (okay, maybe those towels actually were terrible). The point is, you don’t know a towel until you’ve used it. Read on for all the details that make the three best kitchen towels better than all the rest.

The Zeppolis, which look a bit like, but are not marketed as flour sack towels, are unassuming. They don’t feel particularly thick or absorbent. But take a peek into any restaurant kitchen, and you’ll probably catch a glimpse of the blue stripe prominently patterning the bottoms of these towels. They’re a favorite among professional cooks—including the ones in the Bon Appétit test kitchen.

At 14x25", they’re an ideal size to double wrap as an oven mitt to hold a cast-iron skillet. The cotton is quite light, but not too gauzy. That meant they were comfortable to toss over a shoulder, and, while they weren’t the most absorbent, they still slurped up enough water to triple their weight during a 30-second test soak. They were also some of the quickest drying towels of the bunch. And their value can’t be beat, with a pack of 15 (15!) towels costing about $20

These are machine-washable, making it easy to remove any stains, but the towels are white so they’ll show wear easily over time. And as I noted, other towels were more absorbent, but if their main work is drying dishes, glassware. On top of that, I found myself at times wishing it absorbed a bit more water, but outside of major spills they will still work well.

Towel material is really a matter of personal preference. Light cotton towels have their fans, but so do waffle weave towels. The knit, almost-quilted construction of waffle weave makes them more absorbent and sometimes quicker to dry. This Sticky Toffee set in particular stood out among the rest.

They absorbed 30 grams of water, which was less than a waffle weave set from West Elm, but the Sticky Toffee towels were almost dry after 3 hours 45 minutes, whereas the West Elm towels were still too damp to reuse. In terms of versatility, these towels were thicker than some of the other waffle weaves (and all of the cotton towels), which made them effective moving a hot pan. Aesthetically, they have a simple pattern, similar to the Zeppoli towels, and for their style, are affordable at $16 for three towels.

Waffle weave towels are more absorbent than cotton towels, and I wish these soaked up a bit more water during the test. But considering kitchen towels will likely require replacement every couple years, they got the nod over other, slightly more absorbent waffle weaves for their value. They are more than $40 cheaper than the West Elm towels, for example.

If you’ve never used one before, a Swedish dishcloth will seem novel. At first, you might not even think they are kitchen towels. They’re square, and made of a cotton-cellulose material that, when dry, is completely stiff. But don’t be fooled—this high-quality dish towel can mop up like no other.

Swedish dishcloths work a bit like those magic grow capsules that expand once you put them in water. They’re thin and rigid when completely dry, but become more pliant and expand as they soak up water. Dry Swedish dishcloths feel light as a feather. But the second they touch water, they drink it up like a dog on a hot July day. After one 30-second water dunk, the towel increased its weight by 10 times. But the extra water it soaked up didn’t mean it stayed waterlogged for too long. After the 3 hours 45 minutes I gave all the towels to air-dry, this one felt lightly damp but not so saturated I thought it would still make surfaces wet like some other towels. If what you want is a water absorbing workhorse for cleaning up your kitchen, these are the unrivaled champs.

The size and material of the DII dishcloth present some problems. Because they’re small (about 8x7") and rigid when dry, you can’t hang these over your oven handle between uses. They also aren’t as versatile as a cotton or waffle weave towel. You need to roll them up in order to get any protection when moving a pan on the stove or the oven, but when rolled up they become too small to comfortably use.

Like I said: material is a matter of personal preference. Each of these three materials serve different purposes—a cotton towel might not absorb as much as a waffle weave but it’ll dry quicker, and a waffle weave might absorb more but it won’t dry quickly. A Swedish dishcloth both absorbs a lot and dries quickly, but it’s too small and rough for you to use as a hand towel in my opinion. And we didn’t even include microfiber towels in this test, because, while microfiber is terrific for wiping up counters, it melts when exposed to too much heat (if you want to know what can happen, check out this redditor’s predicament). If you want more information on and recommendations for microfiber cloths, Epicurious cleaning guru Emily Farris has covered them here.

I recommend a dual approach—one Swedish dishcloth set and another towel material of your choosing. The Swedish dishcloths are great for countertop messes because of their absorbency and quick-drying capabilities. Having a stack of these on the counter, like reusable paper towels, is a great idea. Then pair them with one of the other hand towels on this list.

A good towel needs to absorb moisture well when wiping down a counter or drying dishes and then dry relatively quickly so you can use it again when the need arises. It should be machine washable, durable enough to scrub at food crusted on a counter, and also thick enough to be fashioned into an oven mitt in a pinch. On top of all that, it should look nice (remember, you’ll have this hanging out in your kitchen a lot so you want to enjoy looking at it) and is a good value.

To test the towels, I started by throwing all 11 in the washer and dryer to see how they fared through a clean. I took equal-sized square swaths of each towel and individually dumped them in a bowl of water for 30 seconds—weighing each swath before and after each soak to get a sense for absorbency. I then laid all of them out and let them dry for about 3 hours 45 minutes. Editors from the test kitchen like to use kitchen towels in lieu of oven mitts in their work, so I also decided to use each towel on the handle of a hot cast-iron skillet to see how well they worked protecting my hands from heat and to demonstrate the towel’s versatility.

The Coyuchi towels almost won a top spot, running neck and neck with the Sticky Toffee waffle weave set. They dried in about the same time as the Sticky Toffee towels, and absorbed about the same amount of water. They were a little bigger than the Sticky Toffee towels, which made them slightly more cumbersome as an oven mitt. They still worked well, though, and the muted colors make them a nice accent in a kitchen. However, a set of six costs over $50, a big bump in price for a small bump in performance. Still, if they work with your budget, these are definitely great towels.

Another version of the Swedish dishcloths we loved so much, and there was nothing we didn’t love about this set from the Swedish Wholesale Store. They performed about the same as the DII Swedish Dishcloths. They had the same absorbency and dried in the same amount of time. I did have the same problems with their size as I did with the DII Swedish Dishcloths, but the latter looked nicer sitting out on the counter.

This was another great set of towels. They absorbed a lot of water, about 46 grams. They look classic, feel smooth on the skin, and are a good value. They’ve got a flat weave to them that’s not quite waffle, but lends a bit more texture and thickness than a standard cotton towel. Because they are a bit more substantial than, say, the Zeppoli towels, they worked better as potholders. That said, they didn’t end up very dry after almost four hours, losing them a spot as one of the top picks.

While these towels absorbed more water than the Sticky Toffee and Coyuchi towels, they still felt quite wet after 3 hours 45 minutes. This was surprising considering how thin they are—if you hold them up to the light, you can see through them. They’re a nice value at $20 for a six-piece towel set, but the weave feels rough on the skin and a little cheaply made. They’ll sop up messes nicely, but other better options on this list performed better across the board.

These West Elm waffle weave towels were some of the best looking of the bunch, and they were highly absorbent too. Available in a variety of earth-toned hues, West Elm favors a slightly more embellished waffle weave embroidery that features a small circular crater in the center to bring in an interesting textural element. It absorbed about 51 grams of water and took a little over 3 hours 45 minutes to fully dry. The main problem with the West Elm towels: They’re expensive. You can only buy them individually for $19. Most of the other hand towels on this list come in at least packs of three or four for not much more money.

A bar mop is a little different than an average kitchen towel. It is a lot thicker and plusher—almost like a fluffy terry towel. The fluffiness of the Utopia towels makes them more absorbent—they actually felt more like bath towels than kitchen towels. But this also meant they took a lot longer to dry. They worked well as oven mitts and I liked that they came in a large pack of 12 towels, but the slow drying time will make them annoying to use if you have to clean up more than once a day.

All-Clad makes a lot of our favorite cookware. But would they make our favorite hand towel too? When All-Clad says “dual-purpose,” it means they’re trying to pack multiple towel types into one, with a cotton side and a terry cloth side. The cotton terry cloth side is meant to make the towel super absorbent, and it did. The All-Clad took on about 75 grams of water. The standard cotton towel side seems like it’s supposed to bring a lightness that would help speed up the drying process, but the high absorbency just didn’t allow for that. This set was the wettest out of the bunch after the allotted drying time

Ever wanted a seven-pack of cloth towels that are so big they almost look like a pillowcase? No? Well, then Aunt Martha’s dish towels are not for you. They’re 33x38" (though, they do also sell sizes in 18x28" or 28x28"). They feel cheap and lack absorbency, only taking on about 20 grams of water. The excess of fabric of these towels did allow me to fold it over a bunch of times to turn the towel into a mitt, but that large size and lack of absorbency were turn-offs. Maybe they could work as napkins or tea towels.

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