What's a tea towel?

Cooking Discussions
1

For bread baking, I’ve long heard of tea towels to use for final risings. Have never used them, as I find overturned bowls or even garbage bags to be adequate means to create a fairly sealed-air environment for a few hours. But now that I’m into cooking sticky rice for Thai preps, I wonder what I might get by way of a tea towel set, so that I don’t need to get one of those bamboo baskets and a fitted pot, Or are those worth the space/trouble?

Any towel tips for baking and general-purpose use? Linen?

2

I don’t have any tips, but flour sack towels is what my mother always used.

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3

Maybe try a strainer in a pot first, double boiler style per this article. (I also don’t see why fine-weave cheesecloth lining a strainer wouldn’t work.)

(Agree on flour sack cloths in general – better texture / absorbency than most tea towels.)

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4

NYT The Wirecutter is big on these all-cotton towels and I have been super happy with them.

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5

Tea towels are usually thinner material, like flour sack towels, and often decorated.
Dish towels tend to be thicker material and more utilitarian.
EX. from Williams Sonoma
Tea towel
https://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/la-vie-en-rose-towel/?pkey=clinen-tea-towels

Dish towel
https://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/williams-sonoma-striped-towels/?pkey=s~dish%20towel~99&sbkey=default

6

Not sure if we are talking about the same thing, but I used cloth towel for steaming glutinous/sticky rice. I got myself a Thai bamboo steamer like this:
image
For me, the towel in a steamer works just as well if not better for me.

7

When a recipe calls for the use of a tea towel, we take one out of the cupboard and use it.

But to answer the question posed in the title, at least from here in the UK, a tea towel is what we use to dry crockery, cutlery, glassware, etc, that’s been handwashed.

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8

Tea(AKA Flour Sack) Towel is a flat woven Cotton Cloth opposed to a Terry Cloth which has a looped Nap(like your Bath Towels).
Cheese Cloth also works fine for steaming as long as the weave is pretty tight(fine) as does an old 100% Cotton Sheet or Pillow Case.

9

That looks like cheesecloth, which is a handy item to have in the kitchen.

10

That is a random photo from internet. The one I use is coarser and thicker than regular cheesecloth.
image

Here is my photo. Top cheesecloth is the one I used for steaming rice, and the bottom cheeseloth is for making stock/broth.

image
image1091×789 94.1 KB

11

I find that even not-so-tight cheesecloth works for me for steaming rice.

12

I use the 89-cent dish towels from Ikea. I keep a ton of them on hand…they can be bleached and they dont shed lint onto your dough, and theyre so cheap I just pitch them when they start llooking rough

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13

I have different types of cheesecloth. Some is so loosely woven it looks like single ply bandage gauze. Other type is more tightly woven with considerable body. I guess there isn’t an international cheese cloth standard …

14

It comes in many grades.
b77fe998-b276-4dcf-98b3-559d85550659.e249f93f40d695983f7d030752dcb250

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15

I should have suspected; then again, I don’t make cheese :grin:

16

( - : It is useful for many things in the Kitchen: making Sachets, straining Stocks and Clarified Butter, lining Molds for Coeur a La Creme, Cheese Mousse etc…