Dairy Kosher Restaurants

First, although the title of this article may imply it, there is no such thing as dairy kosher restaurants, in the sense that the restaurants are kosher only for dairy products.  To better explain this, let’s back up a bit and look at what it means to be kosher in the first place.

To be non-kosher means that the meal is unclean, or unfit to eat.  This definition of cleanliness or uncleanliness comes first from the Torah, and over time has been elaborated and developed by the Deuteronomic Code and Priestly Code.  The starting point to understanding what is clean or not is the animal’s species.  We have animals of the air, of the ground, and of the sea.  In the animals of the air category, birds of prey are not kosher.  Animals of the sea that have both fins and scales are kosher, but this leaves out lobsters, shrimp, scallops, and the like.

 

Animals of the ground are a tougher category.  Insects that fly are not kosher, with a small number of exceptions.  Animals that chew the cud and have a cloven hoof are kosher.  Most famous of the non-kosher animals is the pig, but also the camel and the hare are not kosher.  Fortunately, this still leaves a large selection of kosher species.  While you may not have a lobster, an eagle, or a honeybee dipped in chocolate at any Jewish kosher restaurants, you will find chicken, turkey, beef, and salmon.  In some, you may also find locusts.

Animals must be slaughtered in a humane fashion for their meat to maintain its kosher status.  The next step in the determination of kosher status has to do with blood.  Kosher laws forbid eating blood, so it is not uncommon for restaurants to follow a meat preparation exercise that involves washing, soaking, salting, then washing meat again to remove the blood inherent in the meat.

 

Some of the confusion around dairy kosher restaurants comes from the impact of kosher laws on dairy products.  If an animal is kosher, its milk is kosher.  If an animal is found to be diseased, its milk is no longer kosher.

 

Some additional concerns about kosher and dairy stems from a law in the Talmud that a young goat cannot be seethed in its mother’s milk.  The interpretation over the years and expressed in the Talmud is a ban against cooking any dairy and any meat together, or from eating any combination of the two.  Kosher restaurants and kosher home kitchens often have one set of pots and pans for dairy, and another separate set for meats.  You will not find a cheeseburger in a kosher restaurant.

While there are no rules forbidding fruits and vegetables, there is an effort to clean and inspect produce to make sure there is no accidental consumption of insects.  For this reason alone - the cleanliness of the produce - a kosher restaurant makes a good choice regardless of religious convictions.