5 Uses for Tea Towels

Tea towels are quite handy for kitchen use. I’m not for sure how they officially differ from regular kitchen towels, but the kind I use are big and made with thin fabric.

{Looks like The Huffington Post might know the difference. What the Heck are Tea Towels, Anyway?}

Kitchen Tip: How To Use Tea Towels in Your Kitchen

1. Steaming/reheating. To quickly heat flour tortillas or pita bread or French toast, slightly dampen a tea towel then wrap it around the bread. Microwave on high 30-45 seconds, and use immediately for serving. You can also use this method to try and soften stale bread.

It’s possible one of these is actually a napkin. And no, I don’t iron.

2. Soaking juice. If you’re making a dry salsa, and don’t want juice oozing from the tomatoes, slice them and press them onto a tea towel that has been folded several times. Just be sure to put your towel immediately in laundry water, or spray with a laundry cleaner to help prevent staining. Using red tea towels for this is advised.

3. Anything for which you would use a paper towel. Thin tea towels are like super-durable paper towels. Use for drips, spills, or just shining the kitchen sink. Yes, they’ll get messy and full of spots. But this is life.

4. Bibs. Large-sized tea towels offer more fabric than kitchen towels, making it easier to tie (loosely) around children’s necks at dinnertime. If you’re children are super-messy like mine, consider carrying folded-up tea towels with you to restaurants and picnics in your big mom purse. Store them in a zipper storage bag so you have something to put them back into when they are covered in food. The bibs, that is.

Boy Three and his bib. Also, could be used to dress up as a cowboy. Next Halloween, perhaps.

5. Straining. A little bit like the soaking up juice use, but for more: squeezing juice from a lemon without spilling any seeds, catching drops of fat when reserving juice from beef or chicken, or as a substitute for using cheesecloth. Good old Martha – she knows so much.

Note: I wash my dish towels and cloths in hot water, and sometimes with a laundry booster /stain remover like Oxi Clean or Borax, but I don’t work on kitchen spots much. I feel like the effort would be futile, and I have better things to do than apply elbow grease to tomato stains.  🙂

How do you use your tea towels?