Try baking the sweet potatoes at around 375 for a good long time. At least an hour and a half. The goal is to drive off moisture and caramelize the potato flesh a but. Then you cut open the skins, scoop the flesh out, and roughly mash it with lots of butter, salt, and a small amount of brown sugar and vanilla extract. You don’t want to sweeten the mash so much as get some of that molasses flavor in there. Kicks the shit out of regular mashed sweet potatoes. Which, you’re right, are often bland and watery.
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And saying prayers over non-kosher food does NOT make it kosher.
Yes it does. As I said, I don’t recall the exact procedure, but it is a thing that is done. It’s not intended to be used whenever you feel like a bacon sandwich, but only when getting kosher food is difficult/impossible.
Also, don’t correct me if you can’t differentiate between their, there & they’re. Thanks.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/662253/jewish/Immersing-Utensils.htm
Food placed in an un-immersed utensil is still kosher—just remove it from there as soon as possible.
I call it the “Jewish 10 second rule”.
You might be surprised. Whether or not they use actual leeches, they may still be “using leeches”. The “anti-coagulant” used with the device is sometimes hirudin, which is itself derived from leech saliva and is isolated an anticoagulant protein. It can be used locally (avoiding general blood thinning) or in patients who have an allergy to heparin.
I have no problem with continuing the use of old medicine that works. My point was that the kosher diet has some restrictions in it that may be outweighed by modern food safety practices - like pasteurization. 
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Hi @cherlawrence - No offense intended on my part. I’m not saying that people follow a kosher diet for heath reasons - they don’t.
I’m saying that if you look at the restricted animals and practices, they at one time made clear sense for the continued good health of the people observing the practice. This is especially clear when you remember that the rules were set down pre-pesticide and pre-antibiotic. When you try instead to put the practices into the context of modern food safety practices, a kosher diet makes less common sense (while not nonsensical) and becomes more of a personal religious decision.
After reading this thread and the one about the Jesus wafers, I’m even happier about being an atheist. This shit just sounds like it makes life really complicated for no good reason.
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Right there with ya!
Nature is pretty sweet at figuring out solutions. I’m happy to smear leech-goo all over me if it helps. I don’t have problems with gross things, I just hate the appeal to tradition fallacy that so often comes along with these health fads.
The fish on Fridays thing came in in the Middle Ages; there was no Biblical reason for it, but basically every Friday was a day of penance and fasting, just like all of Lent, no meat from land animals or birds, but fish don’t count.
The church as a whole gave that up in 1966, shortly after Vatican II, but apparently the Brits brought it back in 2011.
The effect it has on me is that the cafeteria at work still does clam chowder on Fridays, so often there’s no vegetarian soup 
And mashed sweet potatoes? Bleh, nowhere near as good as roasted ones. Also, you’d have to make them with butter, assuming that “kosher-style pork chops” means “treyf” rather than “tofu product.” (There’s soybean-based vegetarian ham at many Chinese groceries.)
Sweet potato casserole. With caramelized pecan topping.
Just sayin’.
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No, kosher rules are primarily about the ingredients, not the style of preparation. If you want to make beef bacon or turkey bacon using the same spicing goyim use for pork bacon, that’s just fine. (Similarly, you could make halal bacon out of beef or turkey or tofu.) If you want to make fake crab and shrimp out of kosher fish and red dye, it’s still kosher (apparently shrimp is halal, just not whatever glatt-halal is called.)
But you can’t just substitute lamb for pork in Chinese cooking - the Muslim Chinese dishes that do that come from much different regions than the ones that use pork, so the cooking style’s much different. Lots of cumin and green onions and big thick sesame breads for the northwesterners, though perhaps some of the coastal Muslim groups share more cuisine with pork-eaters.
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Allow me to assure you that the case you seem to be thinking of where in an extreme case, non kosher food may be eaten does not make the food itself kosher at all. Extreme case here means something like stranded in the wilderness with no supplies. Why is this then permitted? According to the principle of piquash nefesh saving a life is paramount over all other commandments, i.e. one should not starve to death. In this case one does not make a blessing over the non-kosher food but blesses God for permitting the non permitted in the extreme exceptional case.
The diet translates very well in any time and just about any place where there is civilization of almost any type. The details arent the reason that some/many Jews have trouble, its that they just don’t care that much about their religion/cultural heritage.
If you weren’t already aware, see here.
That comes down to a Talmudic era ruling. The problem is that flesh of birds looks very much like the flesh of mammals when cooked which could either cause confusion amongst some Jews who might accidentally mix dairy with mammal flesh as a result (and so the cook/server of the food would be violating the commandment not to put a stumbling block in front of the blind) or could lead non Jews seeing Jews eat dairy and bird flesh to assume that these Jews were not following God’s commandments, which means that the folks eating the bird & dairy meal would essentially be committing a public desecration of God’s name.
There is logic here in that even if one performs an act permitted/not forbidden by the Torah, one may end up unintentionally transgressing another law in the process. In some of these cases, extra safeguards around the law are setup.
The issue with pickled vegetables is most often the vinegar used for picking since grape based vinegars have their own set of complications/restrictions. Brining actually presents a different set of complications since it gets interpreted as a form of cooking and thus there end up being issues around the brining process and the containers used, etc.
The jury is still out on this one. Folks who only follow “kosher style” (i.e. not actually kosher) will probably eat the stuff, but those of us who only eat kosher certified meat will wait for formal and widespread rabbinic acceptance and certification of the stuff. Kosher meat isn’t just that the animal itself is permitted but that it was slaughtered according to the rules and found not to show certain defects/signs of illness. Some thoughts on the matter so far include:
- If the vat grown meat was started from a cell culture of a living animal then it can’t be kosher because you can’t ritually slaughter a vat.
- If the source of the vat meat was from a ritually slaughtered and inspected animal then possibly the vat process is keeping the tissue alive and thus its status is unclear. It isn’t alive in the normal sense of an animal but it isn’t dead either since it is growing.
- Maybe vat meat isn’t “meat” at all in the confines of halachic jurisprudence. If so how is it to be classified and can it be considered fit to eat at all?
That isn’t the limit of the debate but hopefully you get the idea.
If I recall right, you mentioned that your family history is cultural/secular Jews so for your bubbe & zadie is this menu offensive?
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Hi there @Israel_B - I hope you understood that what I meant by “translating to modern times” wasn’t whether or not the foods are available, or if there was some inconvenience with following kosher practice, but whether or not people might feel the restrictions still made sense when modern food practice changes how foods are prepared.
Conflict often arises between religion and practice when changes in technology and culture on the whole occur. Many of the practices laid out for keeping kosher may not be represented as “healthful” by that law, but that is their effect due to when those religious laws were handed down.
I understand that keeping kosher is a religious question for people who choose to do so, and that’s why I’m trying to make it clear that I understand it is a personal choice being followed. I also understand that keeping kosher may be a matter of some contention in the Jewish community. I’ve already said that when I’m with friends who have specific dietary requests for religious reasons, I cater to them - I do that even though I myself am an atheist, and have no such beliefs. I just realize that their beliefs are important to them.
the best reason I have been given is when the Jews begged for meat in the desert rather than manna G-d gave them the quayle/tzlav. Yes some, rather many of the rules are arbitrary.
You’re good sir. Thanks for the specific answers. I had obviously not committed to memory the specifics of the matter but IIRC I was told that the same prayer used for cleansing utensils and such could be adapted to foods of unknown kosher certification. Obviously you can’t koshify a hunk of pork because otherwise jews everywhere would be purifying bacon sandwiches left, right and centre.
Brilliant response, though IMHO the vat grown meat should follow the concept of the near term foetal calf inside a kosher schected mother discussion based in masecta chulin but without the concern for marit haayn since it is just more meat cells and not something with the appearance of milk or ever min hachaim.
For those who believe that religion is only for illiterates, at least Jewish students usually as young as 10-12 years old have to be literate in both Hebrew and ancient Babylonian Aramaic studying legal texts with a minimum basic collection about the size of a standard Encyclopedia Britannica. You need not believe in or follow the system but the literacy required for even a dimwit to participate on a low level is pretty high.
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Actually teapot there is an exception, in the same way that fire can be used to kasher utensils also non-kosher bones are made ‘kosher’ for use in purifying/whitening sugar by exposing them to temperatures which denature everything to ash leaving only the bone structure, but that part of the not-kosher animal was never not-kosher itself in the first place. But as for the meat and fat there is no parity with making utensils kosher non kosher is only allowed in cases of emergency, prayers/blessings can’t change the actual charismatics of real world stuff. FYI blessing over dipping new utensils from unknown source is just thanking G-d for giving the command to dip utensils in cleansing waters first before use. The rule just is that you shouldn’t use un-dipped utensils which you actually own, it is separate for the rules of kosher for utensils and has no effect on the food, it is just incorrect behavior.
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This has made the system infinitely easier to remember!
Completely understood, my reply was more in the “FYI” nature rather than trying to dispute you. I will however dispute the health reasons at the time claim as that is a known retcon. This particular explanation was created by the Reform Movement in the 19th century as part of their overall rationale for refusing to follow Torah law. It has since become popular not just amongst non practicing Jews but also in broader Western culture.
Again, I only seek to inform and also I’d like to thank you on behalf of your observant friends for your understanding.
Most welcome. To the best of my knowledge the issues around utensils and vessels are quite separate from the condition I mentioned before.
I’m sure that point has also been considered but the question remains if a meat vat is like a near term calf or not. There is a possibility that this may not work based on the discussion in Chulin 58a where the calf of cow which was treifah may not be offered as a sacrifice on the alter. Anyway IANAR, etc. but indeed the issue seems complicated.
Were vat meat declared kosher by wide acceptance it would be nice for the Jewish community here in Japan since we have no shochet and it is very expensive to import kosher meat.
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Ever considered selling kosher stuff in Japan? I think there’s enough jews there that you’d make a decent business out of it and you’d have the benefit of so much stuff you can eat whatever you want.
I would suggest a bird schita course, doesn’t take too long and if you compare the creepyness of killing birds to eating battery farm crazyness I think the balance is a pretty good deal. For me, who just wants it for free range bird, it has only been a problem of time.
I almost took a job for the OU doing kashrut inspection in Japan but my wife didn’t want me gone so much.
