People who use an ice-cream scoop to dish up their mashed potato

[DrizzleMySwizzle]

Please desist. It’s psychopath behaviour and it repulses me.

Just slap a spoon of mash on the plate like a civilized person. Cannot bear those creepy little 'oh I look a bit like ice-cream but I'm not ice-cream' mounds.

Thank you for abiding by this new culinary law from this day forward.

School cooks.

Not sure anyone else does. I suspect it was part of their training.

You've given me disturbing flashbacks of primary school dinners in the 80s and being forced to eat spam fritters, mashed potato and plum tomatoes. Our dinner ladies were evil!

A pea on each one, of course!

My nan used to do this! She had a red plastic scoop, it had like a little tab (if that’s the right way to describe it!) in the top of the mould, which was activated by pressing a button on the handle and that would push whatever was in the mould out onto the plate/bowl. It was always perfectly round with a fluffy trim 😂

I might do this for my dc and see what their reaction is. They prefer rice served in mounds from a coffee cup so mounds of mash could be a hit.

I do that! It's easier to make the mash even over fish pie.

MIL does this. It makes me shudder too.

That's pretty much how the potatoes are served in virtually every carvery I've eaten over the years. I think it makes sense to work out quantities.

Should mashed potato be liquid?!

It must have enough consistency so it's possible to form a mound with peaks in it. Pink peaks if you mix tomato ketchup through it first. Proper 80s kid's stuff.🤣

Happy memories of Sunday lunches cooked by my mum and served up at noon on the dot...😁

(Even if my brother and I had rolled in from the nightclub at 4am, the brisk hoovering that took place while the Yorkshire puddings were in the oven made sure we were awake!)

Anyone who doesn't use the ice cream scoop is mighty strange

My DM added ice cream scoop to her Christmas list a couple of years ago. I thought it was odd as they don't really have much ice cream and she pointed out that she wanted one for measuring out muffin batter!

How does that stack up in the whole debate?!

When we have bangers and mash, I always make my mashed potato into a volcano and pour the gravy on from the top, leaving a crater of gravy at the top.

I'm 46! 😂

Not liquid, not solid. Soft peaks.

Ye for portion control.

Hospitals do this. I watched it being done yesterday as the meals were handed out on the ward.

I don’t use an ice cream scoop for mash but I use it for so many things that aren’t ice cream - balls of cookie dough, making meatballs, arancini balls, pancakes etc. Makes portioning things really easy. I’m definitely going to use it for mash now!

😂 it does make me think of over stodgy school lunches. I don’t even own an ice cream scoop.

I do this. It makes me very happy. No food should ever be plopped.

My mam has been doing this since the 60s when she got married. She got a wedding present of large cutlery set with one of these, a large two prong fork and a large sharp knife. She still has and still uses all three of them 60 years later.

In fact I am sure that I thought the scoop was for potato and not ice cream as we would have had more spuds than ice cream back then.

It does prove that they definitely made better quality stuff back then.

If it’s champ for me:

classic: a mountain topped with a well of butter at the top for dipping

basic: straight out of the saucepan (when too poorly for extra dishes)

fancy: mountain topped with a well of cheese covered beans spilling lava-like down onto lower slopes decorated with bacon tree trunks

scallions, white onion and seasalt embedded within the mountains like tiny emeralds and diamonds for excavation

an icecream tub amount, the cat can have the piddly icecream scoop (the’d be sufficient butter and cream to make it palatable for her)

Not only have I been doing this with mashed potatoes for years, I also dish up Basmati rice this way as a side to Curry.
It looks nice and neat on the plate with whatever is served beside it, and it's about 1 serving which is easy to control; 1 scoop, 2 or 3.
I also use the ice cream scoop, and that's not a teeny one, it holds 60 ml, to plop quick bread muffin mix into the pans; no fuss, no muss, the right amount every time, no spill-overs of batter.
I also use this hand-dandy kitchen tool for dispensing a black bean mix into the perfect amount to shape into patties.
Would also work with a mince mix for the same thing.
Oh yeah, I also use it for doling out ice cream.
Sorry to upset you OP but it works for me!

Thank you! You have just given me a flashback to the only two times in my life where anyone has done this in my presence -- both in the early 1990s, and by the aunt and mother of a student friend of mine (who had presumably learned this horrible technique growing up in the same household).

Yes, it brings a 'sad hospital food' air to the nicest meal. There should be a law.

It’s what they used to do for school dinners, to make sure everyone got exactly the same amount of revolting lumpy mashed potato.

Scotland, late 1970s, at school friend's house during holidays. Lunch one day was a bowl of Heinz Cream of Tomato with an ice cream scoop of Smash in the soup.