I used a large one last night to serve up hemispherical mounds of white rice for a Thai red curry. And I’ll use a small disher as a melon baller. I’m less interested in specific portion sizes than I am in the plating aspects. I need a couple more sizes, but I’ve learned I favor the Hamilton Beach color coded ones.
So do you use them, and what for? Shape or portion control? Have a favorite size?
I only recently started using them, and almost exclusively to plate white rice.
The initial inspiration was a shrimp dish I wanted to recreate.
I have small (1 cup maybe?) white bowls from Wegmans that I most often use for my mise, and sadly only one smaller one of the same provenance (1/2 cup I assume).
It looks pretty on the plate, which is the main reason I use them when I do.
We’re the same in this.
But I wonder if there are retentive cooks out there who use dishers as a means of limiting carbs or calories. I know restaurants can get focused on the cost control aspects, and need to be consistent, but that’s not my thing.
Portioning cookie dough.
Not for plating but for prep. Meatballs, cupcake / muffin batter, fritters, cookie dough, stuffing balls, kababs / patties of various types, probably other things.
I have 3 sizes, though I think I end up favoring the middle one. If I want something a bit different in size than I have I’ll just use one from my cup measure set instead.
I rarely want shaped rice, but if I do, I use a bowl and invert it.
(I actually have serving ware that’s sized that someone gave me a long time ago – WW used to sell it – but have never actually used it. When I was learning to portion control carbs, I’d just use a cup measure till I could eyeball it, or cup measure into one of my bowls the first time and then I knew how big the bowls were so I never needed to measure again.)
I have two dishers, a 40 and a 60. I use them exclusively for cookies. The 60 is for the perfect snack-sized cookie, and I use the 40 to make cookies for homemade ice cream sandwiches. I don’t think I’ve ever used them for anything else.
Before I started using dishers, I always experienced mission creep in my cookies. Cookies on the first and second pan were usually a consistent size, but by the last pan, they’d be at least 50% larger.
Are dishers like ice cream scoops? I have three or four sizes, but aside from cookies and meatballs, I can’t recall why. I think I have made candy with them.
ETA yup!
Yeah, I just learned this word! It’s an ice cream scoop or a melon baller over here.
Well, how ya gonna be all professional-like even though you’re “just” cooking at home if you just go around calling it something as obvious as a scoop, huh? 
I just realized they are an actual thing.
So, no, I don’t.
Needs a French name for me to take it seriously. Unless it’s pronounced “dish-ay.”
Multiple sizes for prep. They speed up tasks immensely.
Nope.
I just use a Chinese soup spoon.
Interesting that Matfer doesn’t even have a name. In fact, the only similar thing I could find in their catalog was called “ice cream scoop”.
if you’re making - for example - a batch of cookies qty dozen+… - having a uniform dough qty per cookie is a serious advantage.
for salmon balls - deep fried - serious advantage
for salmon hand formed patties, not really. . .
for Ikea Swedish meat balls, an essential tool
bottom line - very useful depending on what you’re doing -
and bottom line (2) - one size does not fit all - multiple/various volume scoops needed
Large and small, mainly used for cookie dough. For rice, I lightly oil a small bowl to get that cute hemispherical mound.
But I don’t think I’ve heard the term “dishers”, although I suppose it makes sense. Similar to what small_h says, we just call them scoops or cookie scoops. (We have a different thingie for ice cream)
Nope. I did thought about getting one for the cookie dough (that was when I was very much into making cookies)
I’m all about portion control with them especially for cookies. Haven’t tried the Hamilton Beach color coded ones yet but they sound handy.
