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I know I would not have the patience nor have success with that, so for that reason alone I would keep a whisk (I only make a roux three or four times a year). Small item and worth it for that alone, IMO.
I've tried using whisks, but I just haven't been able to get comfortable with them.
I overlooked this earlier, so I'm going to expand on my previous answer. I don't like a balloon whisk because they seem to me to require a lot of effort, a lot of stirring and large movements of my hand and arm, and I find that they aren't a whole lot more efficient than a spoon or fork in that respect.
My spring whisk on the other hand takes much less effort. The spring action takes the small, close movements of my hand and turns them into a much larger movement of the spring in the bowl. With my medium size mixing bowl my hand movements are more akin to stirring a cup of coffee, the spring coil does all the work for me. Obviously this doesn't work well for heavier or thicker mixing, but it's absolutely great for eggs, whipping cream, sauces, etc.
I like using a whisk. I used a ball whisk for years until my daughter moved out. I told her to take whatever she wanted. There went the ball whisk, among other things. Now I use a french whisk that I had but never used.
I have several whisks, small, medium and large sizes. Some are metal/wire and some are silicone. I have regular whisks, a spring coil whisk and a sauce whisk. They are used fairly regularly for eggs, gravy, sauces, and even chocolate milk, etc.
I also have an immersion blender with a whisk attachment. I use that mainly for whipping milk into the mashed potatoes but after using a potato masher first. And I use it for making a large amount of scrambled eggs or for batter when baking from scratch.
One Christmas I made a batch of homemade hot cocoa mix and added a tiny whisk to the top of the pretty jar I put the mix in. So proud of myself--but I was taken down a bit by my friend's mother, who looked over the top of her glasses at me with her eyebrows raised and set it aside, reaching for the next present in her big stack of gifts. Tried to explain but that only made matters worse!
I rarely bake, but I own 4 whisks. I use them when I am preparing homemade salad dressings, and also when making Bechamel and Bearnaise sauces. A fork would not produce acceptable results, IMHO.
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