I was recently in a camp where the group of attendees would take turn into cooking and doing the dishes.
There I observed that, while I followed these steps while washing the dishes:
- coarse rinse with water
- wipe/scrub with soaped sponge
- rinse with water
- wipe dry with a cloth
all the other, when it was their turn, skipped step 3 and directly wiped dry the soapy dish/pan with a cloth.
when I observed "oh, don't you rinse it before drying?" I was just told "nah, not needed".
Is it safe to not rinse the dishes before wipe dry them?
Based on what I know, water will evaporate, but dish soap won't, so the cloth would simply smear a layer of soap all over the dish/pan which will then be ingested with the food going into that dish/pan at the next use.