Working in a Kosher Kitchen

If your client keeps kosher, it's important to keep these food storage and preparation rules in mind.

Separation of meat and dairy

• The Torah prohibits eating meat and dairy together.  In addition, there is a required wait time between eating meat followed by dairy.  However, when eating dairy first, followed by meat, it is acceptable to “rinse” the mouth with a neutral food, such as bread.
• Eating dairy with fish or dairy with eggs is permitted.
• All fruit, vegetables and grains can be eaten with meat or dairy.
• Even a small amount of dairy can make a meat non-kosher.  For example, margarine usually contains a small amount of whey to add a buttery taste.  So, cooking meat in margarine would not be permitted in a kosher home. 
• Cooking eggs or fish in margarine or butter is allowed.

Kosher utensils and equipment

• This separation of meat and dairy is so important that anything that touches the food (or anything that is handled by the person who is cooking the food) must also remain separate.  Therefore, a kosher kitchen will have two sets of pots and pans, dishes, forks and spoons, knives, cutting boards, dishwashers, dishpans, sponges, and kitchen towels.
• It is believed that a utensil becomes the status of the food it touches, and can transmit that status to the next food it touches. 
• So a knife or cutting board that is used to cut meat is considered a meat item and cannot be used to cut dairy.
• If a saucepan is used to cook chicken soup, and then later used to heat up milk, the meat status of the pot is transferred to the milk, making both the milk and the saucepan non-kosher.  The saucepan would need to be re-kasherized (or made kosher again). 
• Kashering is the term used to describe the process of restoring an item (pot, utensil, etc.) to a usable state after being contaminated.  The rules for this are complex and may require 24 to 48 hours of heating, cleaning and waiting.