13 Best Kitchen Towels of 2021, According to Kitchen and Textile Pros By Jamie Kim of Good Housekeeping | Kitchen towels come in handy for drying hands and dishes, wiping counters, soaking up spills and more. They may be one of the most-used items in the kitchen so the last thing you want are kitchen towels that don’t work well for the job at hand. That’s where the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliances and Textiles Labs come in. Both of these Labs test hundreds of kitchen gadgets and textiles to find the best products. Our kitchen pros use dish towels to clean up after testing a variety of kitchen products like grill pans, food storage containers, dutch ovens and more. In the Textiles Lab, our fiber scientists put all kinds of towels through rigorous testing, from bath towels to beach towels, testing for factors like absorbency, drying time, durability, softness, shrinkage and colorfastness.