Professional kitchen towel use vs typical thick kitchen towel use?
Trying to organize my kitchen towel/dish cloth system. If terry/thicker cotton is so much more absorbent than thinner say flour sack towels why do professional kitchen use the thinner "restaurant towels"?
And how do they clean up oil spills? Because you can't clean up oil with a dry towel.
Thank you!
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When comparing home and commercial kitchen products, there are vast differences.
You mentioned sopping up oil with a kitchen towel. Where I live all commercial kitchens must have expensive grease traps. These traps are cleaned by a third party at considerable cost. Also the kitchen towels are most likely also laundered by a third party. The last thing a business owner would want is to put more grease or oil into their drain because of cost so probably compostable paper or disposable towelling is used.
Commercial kitchens must follow food safety guidelines and must wash dishes in a commercial dishwasher capable of reaching a temperature hot enough to sanitize all dishes, cutlery, cooking pots and utensils, all these must be air dried and cannot dried with linen or disposable towelling (to prevent cross contamination.) Therefore there would never be linens used for drying, only bar towels to sanitize counters, tables and other surfaces.
Speaking from my professional and home owner perspective any type of fat, oil or dairy product should never be put down your home drain, even through your washing machine. I suggest that you use disposable paper towelling to soak up excess oil and compost it if possible.
At home I have found the best kitchen towels to be waffled cotton. They need not be expensive and if you never use fabric softener or dryer sheets to launder them, they will get better with age.