[Sca-cooks] Basic Kosher

[Solveig]

Noble Cousins!

Greetings from Solveig!

>1) No mixing meat and dairy. You have to wait several hours after
>    eating meat until you are allowed to eat anything dairy. How long
>    depends on where you are from, traditions vary. In my case it is 3
>    hrs. Numbers range from 1 to 6 hours.

The rule for waiting after dairy before eating meat can be quite
complicated depending upon the nature of the dairy product being
eaten. For example, hard cheese generates a longer delay than a
glass of milk.

>2) All meat must be from Kosher animals.

Basically, a restricted family of true cud chewers that includes
pretty much all relatives of deer, all relatives of sheep, and
all relatives of the cow. Torah says that the animal must have
a cloven hoof and chew its cud and lists four defective animals:
the camel, the rock badger, the hare, and the pig. So yes, in
principle you can as I recall have a Kosher feast including such
delicacies as: bison, giraff, and yack.

>2b) For poultry the bible includes a list of "Do not eat these"
>     The common kosher birds are Chicken, Squab, Goose, Duck and Turkey.

This one gets nasty as the identitfy of some of the forbiddedn animals
is unclear. The list of forbidden birds is quite short and includes
bats, but the list of birds which tradition allows to be eaten is also
quite short. Incdentally, the kosher nature of most birds means that
Noah's ark was full of birds as seven pairs were taken aboard for each
of the kosher species.

>2c) Sea food must have fins and scales. So Trout, salmon, tuna, and
>     many others are kosher. Shellfish, shark, eel and so on are not.

The scales have to be easily removeable. There are lots of discussions
about the problems posed by the plates of the sturgeon and similar
problematic fish which are judged non-kosher.

>Meat must also be soaked and salted to remove the blood.

Not true. The meat can be broiled without soaking and salting and liver
must always be broiled because it is full of blood which can not be
removed by soaking and salting. The prohibition is actually on consuming
blood of either meat or fowel. Fish blood is permitted.

>4) Fish, vegetables, eggs, fruit etc is "Parve" which is to say it is
>    not meat or diary. However fish and meat should not be served on
>    the same plate (I don't understand this bit to be honest).

There is a technical problem with "ova" which are eggs removed from
a slaughtered chicken. These are considered to be meat. Eggs with
blood spots on the yoke are considered treif and are not eaten.
Commercially produced eggs are very unlikely to have blood spots as
the hens do not consort with roosters. Also, kosher eggs must be
from either a kosher bird or a kosher fish.

>5) kasher the pots. How you do that is beyond the scope of this email.

To make it worse, neither wood, ceremaic, nor plastic can be kashered.
Pretty much only glass and metal can be kashered. The basic principle
of kashering is that kelim (vessels) are kashered in the same way
(boiling, direct application of flame, &c.) in which they were made
non-kosher.
-- 

					Your Humble Servant
					Solveig Throndardottir
					Amateur Scholar

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Barbara Nostrand, Ph.D.         | Solveig Throndardottir, CoM, CoS   |
| deMoivre Institute              | Carolingia Statis Mentis Est       |
| mailto:nostrand at acm.org         | mailto:bnostran at lynx.neu.edu       |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Note. Many popular "free" email services are automatically routed to |
|       the trash by my email filters.                                 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+