You'd think that would be some kind of cool iTunes reference, but it's not.

I've tried to keep some tahini on hand for a while, because it's useful:

1. Unlike peanut butter, it's not usually made with salt (or at least not much), so there are no sodium implications.
2. Like peanut butter, it basically lasts forever, especially if you refrigerate it after opening.

I used to make Dean Ornish's recipe for fat-free hummus (page 152), but that's too high in sodium now—it relies not just on canned chickpeas, but also on that said garbanzos are packed in a salty liquid, which gives the no-tahini version a lot of its flavor. I have no-salt-added canned chickpeas, but they fail in the Ornish recipe due to lack of seasoning.

Cook's Illustrated published a restaurant-style hummus recipe ($) in the May-June 2008 issue, and it works really well with salt substitutes (if I add a little more than ½ teaspoon, at least), but it requires tahini. A few other recipes I use call for it as well, and on this weekend's The Splendid Table, Lynne Rossetto Kasper answered a listener's question about using leftover tahini, and she provided some great ideas. (Download the show for yourself in their podcast.)

I only have one—ok, two real problems using tahini. One, it makes a godawful mess. It's much less viscous than peanut butter but every bit as sticky, so it flows freely and sticks everywhere.

Two, every recipe calls for a small amount of tahini "stirred well to combine." I've had horrible problems stirring tahini, because I get it in big two-pound jars. (I want to slap people when I hear advice to get ingredients at "my local Asian market." The closest one I know about is 40 miles away, and the last time I actually got there, it was closed. They're open when I sleep.) It's less expensive in both time and money to get bigger containers because they last, as noted, just about forever. I've never had tahini go bad on me.

But in these jars, as opposed to short wide tubs like supermarket hummus, it's very difficult to stir. The last jar I finished probably had 10% of its weight in sesame seed solids stuck to the bottom when I had to pitch it because no matter what spoon I used, I just could not maneuver into the jar to get it scraped up. (Yes, that means the "tahini" I did use was too thin. That's part of the problem.)

If I use force with a big spoon, it splashes everywhere, but the jar is too narrow to get a long whisk into, and the force required to move the handle made the tahini splash anyway. I like to mix things in small containers with whisks by holding the handle of the whisk between both palms and rubbing them back and forth, giving the whisk rotational velocity while keeping it centered. It works great for eggs in a measuring cup, but didn't work for tahini: any whisk I could get into the jar didn't reach to the corners, and the whisks big enough to do that (I have three whisks, so don't get ideas) wouldn't fit into the jar opening.

Then, tonight, it hit me: my stick blender has a whisk attachment.

It's just like the one pictured here. I got it because it was on sale and was recommended by Cook's Illustrated except they though the attachments were unnecessary, but I didn't have a smaller blender or a mini-chopper. I used that mini-chopper multiple times per week until the lid on it broke earlier this year, giving the motor no way to turn the chopper's shaft. The big blender part still works, and I use it for smaller blending tasks.

But the whisk? You can probably tell just from the picture that the damn thing has really thin wires. I don't mean "egg-slicer" thin, in that they'll break if you hit a tough mushroom stem, but not a whole lot thicker. They're much flimsier than my Oxo hand whisks. I tried using it on the hand blender a few times, but the thin wires didn't do much, and the thing rotated so fast (even on slow speed) that ingredients went flying. I might use it to mix a viniagrette in a tall jar if shaking wouldn't work.

Tall jar? Hey! I got it out and got out the tahini, which I'd kept upside down so the thick sesame solids were near the top this time (and wouldn't weld to the bottom of the container). With very gentle pressure, the whisk attachment got into the jar opening! And it reached all the way to the bottom!

I held my breath and, preparing to have to clean tahini off every surface in the kitchen, pressed the button. It worked like a charm. There was no splatter. The speed that was a hindrance in a bowl was just the ticket in an enclosed jar, and the looser texture of the tahini didn't stress the thin wires at all. In just about ten seconds, I had better-mixed tahini than in any previous jar I'd ever bought, and with only one dirty whisk attachment for the effort!

So, yay for me, I figured something out. Now maybe I can use this low-sodium, high-flavor (and yes, high in fat, but moderate on saturated fat) ingredient in more dishes, because getting out 2-3 tablespoons is no longer a mixing chore from hell. Hooray for connecting the dots!