Should Swedish Dish Cloths Replace Paper Towels and Sponges? | America's Test Kitchen

-Today, we're gonna talk about Swedish dishcloths, which evidently are dishcloths that you do not need to assemble.

How about that? Well, Hannah's here, and she's gonna take us through our most recent testing. Now, I'm very interested in this because I'm not quite sure what they are.

-We felt the same exact way. These have not been common in the U.S. for a long time, but recently, they are everywhere.

They're a biodegradable and eco-friendly alternative to paper towels, which are single-use, and sponges, which are made from plastic.

They've been around in Europe for years, though. They were actually invented in 1949 by Curt Lindquist, a Swedish engineer, yes.

So, now they're coming stateside. We wanted to test. First of all, we didn't know what they were, either, like I said.

Let's try this out here. Pick that one up. -Okay. That's adorable. It looks like a giant cocktail napkin.

-Yes, the patterns on some of these -- gorgeous. But it's, like, crispy, right? You're like, "What's going on here?"

Watch it transform. -Very floppy. Now this looks like a washcloth. -Exactly. Now it's sopping wet and floppy, so totally different form.

We went into methodical testing mode because we did not know how to test these. So we made a list of everything we do in the kitchen with a sponge, a dish towel, and a paper towel.

And then we did a bunch of research on what is available in the U.S. -Okay. -We zeroed in on four major brands that were a little bit different from one another, and we tested them with all of those tasks we made in our big list.

Our first finding, if I may ask you to do a little more work here. -Right. Because you want a dishcloth to be able to dry off glassware.