percypercy , the one you’re showing looks like the standard egg beaters I’ve seen in stores, which I’ve bought and not liked. Thanks for trying, though!
I don’t think there’s any specific culinary advantage, Shalmanese. However if you have a small kitchen with a lack of bench space, it can be much easier to put the bowl in the sink and manually beat the egg whites rather than move everything around and set up the electric mixer.
I have a whisk like this one but it’s more rounded rather than heart-shaped. I got mine from Willams-Sonoma years ago, but I couldn’t find one on their site now - all they had were the balloon and flat whisks.
I use it all the time, and for mixing eggs, it’s wonderful. A couple of ‘whisks’ through the eggs and they’re mixed perfectly.
Is that the only real use for it? Because as others have noted, a fork does a nice job if you’re mixing your eggs for a batter or omelet. It seems like a decidedly single-use gadget. (As a gadget freak, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.) If I’m making something that needs a merengue, I’ve probably got my Kitchen Aide out already so what’s the advantage of having a manual egg beater? Can I use it instead of a whisk for general purpose whisking?
I suppose the only real use for my eggbeater is for whipping eggwhites–which I do fairly frequently for waffles (it makes them a lot lighter). I would also use it for mixing an omelette or scrambled eggs, I suppose, only I don’t like egg dishes for some reason.
I don’t personally like those little electric mixers; I had one once and didn’t like it, and when it burned out I didn’t get a new one. This is probably because we never had one growing up, but I just didn’t like cleaning it, and it was too piddly for big jobs and too much trouble for little ones. Not my style, I guess.
So instead I have a KitchenAid mixer for big jobs and forks and eggbeaters and stuff for little ones. I don’t like using the big mixer for a little batch of eggwhites, because it just seems like too much work. I can throw the eggbeater into the dishwasher and it only takes a minute. I do just use a fork, usually, for mixing up an egg with milk for something.
Hrm. Is it just me, or is the Straight Dope about the only place where you can get into a long international discussion on the virtues and vices of eggbeaters?
I’m puzzled as to what sort of electric egg beater your referring to. My one has two removable tines, exactly like those on manual egg beaters. You press a button and they shoot off into the sink where you just rinse them quickly with some water and they are clean.