On beans and my dislike of edge-case kitchen implements.

My immersion blender does not make aquafaba, though I had hoped it could; I have only succeeded through the precise and laborious application of a manual whisk, and on reflection I actually have very few uses for aquafaba and I'm not sure I care enough about it to make it again. Apparently a motorized whisk works, but I despise an overabundance of single-use kitchen implements--indeed, I could barely justify the immersion blender, and for some time I regretted the purchase for the waste of space. The preponderance of oddly-shaped, difficult-to-clean edge-case kitchen implements it seems to entail is, indeed, one of my chief complaints against European-style cooking. Let me make do with a pot, a frying pan, a pair of chopsticks, a cutting board, and one good knife. (I'll tolerate a menkiri bōchō but only because I like udon and soba a lot. I suppose that also entails a rolling pin, but that is easy to clean and store.)

However, I make dal far more often than I make hummus or falafel--whose byproduct is that peculiar suspension of beanstuff--and I found that the immersion blender works splendidly on dal. Most recently I applied it to a simple chana dal recipe that I originally discovered as a filling for dal parathas.

When I am too lazy to make parathas, I just make the dal.

A single-use implement is justifiable if I will use it often--say, a rice cooker, a teapot, or something that works well for dal.