Kosher: A Brief Primer

Anne wrote and asked about mixing milk and meat so I wrote her a nice email back and decided to share what I wrote with y'all...

The separation of milk and meat comes from rabbinic interpretation of the latter parts of the verses of Exodus 23:19 and Deutoronomy 14:21 which both state, "You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk."

From that, the rabbis established Jewish law to prohibit preparing, eating, serving, or benefiting from a mixture of meat (including chicken) and dairy together. Separate utensils are used for cooking and serving meat and dairy foods. Thus things like lasagna, cheeseburgers, and chicken Parmesan are off limits.

There are time limits on when one can eat dairy after meat and vice-versa. We wait a half hour after dairy before meat and we wait three hours after meat before dairy. There are foods that are neutral (also known as pareve) and these include some non-neutral seeming foods such as fish (only those with scales are kosher) and eggs but all fruits and vegetables are pareve as are most snack foods found in Israel (thank goodness!)

We have made our kitchen a meat kitchen and thus have no dairy products, utensils, plates, cups, etc. in the house. We thus love to go to the cafe down the street for some excellent dairy dishes!

You can learn much, much more about kosher from the About.com Kosher Food site.