Kosher Dietary Laws
Contact Matters

The Purpose of This Article

Rather it is meant to heighten your awareness
of the kosher dietary laws and show how
status transfers from food to utensils (and back).

Central to understanding this is the fact that...

Kosher Is A Physical Reality

• All food is from a permitted species - or not.
• Animals are shechted (slaughtered) correctly - or not.
• Blood is removed completely - or not.
• Meat and milk have been mixed - or they have not.
• Kosher is not a trend or a taste.
• It is not a "style"
• It's not "blessed by a rabbi"
• Food is either kosher or not kosher.

What Causes Transfer of Status?

The usual method is cooking and the usual agent is heat.

[As an aside cooking meat and milk together is the Torah (Biblical)
prohibition. Frying, broiling or baking them are Rabbinic prohibitions.
Here is a brief explanation of Torah Law and Rabbinic Law].

As an example if a hard boiled egg is placed in a hot
pot of beef stew the egg now has the status of meat.
However, if the same egg contacts a piece of salami
when both are cold, the egg will remain neutral.
(Just rinse it off).
Nothing caused the taste of the meat to transfer to the egg.

Heat is factor number one in the transfer of food status.
It is when you are handling hot food or utensils that
you will want to be especially careful.

The source of the heat matters as well.
A pot on the stove is a primary source of heat.
Once the food or liquid is put in another container,
it is a secondary source. The more times a food is transferred
the less effect its heat has on anything else.

The phrases Kli Rishon, Kli Sheni and Kli Sh'lishi refer
respectively to primary, secondary and tertiary sources of heat.
Each source transfers heat in a different way.

Taste Also Transfers To and From Utensils.

It also transfers taste to utensils.
Your plate, your cutlery and the pot you used to cook
can all absorb the taste of the food.
So can your stove and sink.

If the food or utensil is hot enough the taste moves between them.
This is important because...
just as your soup pot absorbs the taste of the chicken,
it also releases that taste.

If you cook milk in it - guess what...?
You now have milk and meat mixed in the food
and in the material of the pot.

Double trouble.

Taste can transfer repeatedly from pot to food,
to the next pot and the next food.
Although the taste diminishes every time
it always has some effect. Your rabbi will know how.
He can de-mystify the kosher dietary laws for you.

Taste Transfers in Other Ways.

1)If meat and dairy foods soak together in liquid for
twenty four hours they may no longer be eaten.
Depending on the situation
- you will ask your rabbi, won't you! -
if they are together less than twenty four hours,
rinsing may be enough to permit them.

2)If the liquid is strong, like vinegar or brine,
you don't need twenty four hours.
It's considered cooked in much less time.
Ditto for foods that were salted together.
Salting is considered cooking.

3)Strong or pungent foods will acquire and release
flavor without heat. (The spiciness is the heat).
Horseradish is one such food. Onion and garlic are others.
They can pick up flavor from food or from a utensil especially a knife.

4)Dochka d'sakina is translated as "the pressure of a knife".
It's another method of cold transfer. When a knife is used to cut food,
some of the taste of that food transfers to the knife.
Likewise the taste of the food in the knife
transfers out to the other food.

Volume, Taste and Time

In short, what happens if one food - say, a drop of milk -
accidentally falls into another, like your beef soup?
It may not matter. If the soup is more than sixty times the
volume of the milk it might be permitted because the taste
of the milk had no effect.

I know that I am repeating myself but when something like this
does happen a qualified opinion is very important.
There are usually several factors to consider at once.

Nosen Ta'am Lif'gam means "an unpleasant taste is imparted"

I am guessing that this is the kosher dietary
law that you will find the most odd.
The only time one food can make a
mixture not kosher is if it is good-tasting.
In a normally forbidden mixture,
if one of the foods is foul or rotten, the mixture is not forbidden!

"So, what," you point out, politely. "No one will eat it anyway."
True, but here's what.
After twenty four hours food gets stale and inedible.
This is also true of the taste of food absorbed by a pot.
No one wants it.

So what?
So...

When a pot is unused for twenty four hours
the taste of the food in the pot does not transfer out.
The taste is considered unpleasant and cannot
affect any other food to make it not kosher.

Example: You cook chicken soup on Monday.
The next time you use the pot is Wednesday
but you use it to boil milk

That's an oopsie and your pot is now not kosher but...
you can consume the milk. It is kosher.

How come?

The milk is still kosher because the two day-old
taste of the chicken had no effect on it.
The pot is now not kosher because the milk was absorbed by a meat pot.
You'll have to kasher it - make it kosher.

By the way, if a person does this on purpose
then the milk is not permitted either. Jewish dietary
laws are laws - not loopholes.

For some detail on restoring kosher status (kashering)
see "Setting Up From Scratch" according to kosher dietary laws.

The Condensed Version

• The nature of the improper contact.
• Where the cooking took place.
• The temperature
• The composition of the food.
• The material of the utensil.
• The volume of the food.
• The status of the utensil and most recent usage.

A rabbi's opinion is almost always necessary
and now you can begin to see why.