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Keeping Your Kitchen Kosher (infographics)

Keeping your Kitchen Kosher

  1. Separate pot and dish sets & storage with at least one for dairy. Mark drawers with “dairy” and “meat” labels. Recognize the difference of the pots and utensil. E.g. The “dairy” knife if blue.
  2. Two separate sinks. Right sink is “dairy”
  3. Ovens – double, two singles or stove with a separate oven.
  4. Best oven: “Self cleaning”  so you can switch from dairy <–> meat
  5. Cutlery and utensil drawers – double or an extra for dairy
  6. Microwave box to “dairy” use with label.
  7. Buy only kosher. Show some signs like OU, OK and COR: http://ekollel.com/kashrus.php

Kashering/Making a kitchen Kosher

  1. Kashering your kitchen is at least a two-day process. You will need to clean all the elements and then wait 24 hours before kashering them. This goes back to the rule “eino ben yomo”, “not of the day”–a full 24-hour day must pass in order for the various parts of your kitchen to lose any unkosher flavor they might have absorbed. After 24 hours, those flavors are considered ta’am lifgam, having a bad taste. This minimizes the chance that traces of treif [unkosher food] could still contaminate the kitchen while it is being kashered.
  2. k’volo kach polto, an expression that means, literally, “as it is absorbed, so is it purged.”
  3. Libun (=”purify” ) : grill, baking pans used in an oven, or frying pans used to heat oil.
  4. Libun Gamur, “complete purification” : heating a pan or grill until it is red hot. To heat pans until they are red hot usually requires a blowtorch, as your standard oven does not reach temperatures that are hot enough, and this is a procedure most often performed by a rabbi.
  5. Libun Kal, “simple purification” : Heating metal hot enough that paper touching it scorches. When an oven goes through a self-cleaning cycle, it gets this hot. This is a method you might use on a frying pan.
  6. Hag’alah, “scouring” or “scalding,” : pots or flatware that have become treif through contact with hot liquids (show image of the 3 “CHA”: חם, חריף, חמוץ). Hag’alah meansdeeping the item in a large pot of boiling water.
  7. Irui, “infusion,” is kashering by pouring boiling water over something, a method used for countertops and sinks.
  8. Now an arrow go back to ” Keeping your Kitchen Kosher” –> Separate sets, drawers, etc..