What Makes a Meal Kosher?

If you observe the Jewish faith, you adhere to a set of dietary laws called kashrut, which dictate what foods you can and cannot eat. Under kashrut guidelines, acceptable edibles are "kosher." (Editor's note: In Hebrew, non-kosher food is known as treif.)

Why keep kosher?

In the Jewish faith, eating kosher food symbolizes the awakening of the soul to its full spiritual breadth. When keeping kosher, observers feel they gain greater awareness of their world, and a greater appreciation for all of its creatures. This spiritual awareness helps Jewish people build a better world. The Hebrew word for this perspective, tikkun olam, means "improving the world."

Kosher law also dates back to a period of time when we did not have government regulation of food, modern food processing techniques or modern health treatments. In ancient times, many kashrut guidelines helped people preserve good health. Today, if you keep kosher, then you eat kosher foods all year long. During Passover (Pesach in Hebrew), you follow additional dietary rules.

Kosher facts and guidelines

Kosher meat, poultry and seafood
Dairy rules and kosher eating
Produce: almost always kosher
Cooking kosher
Kosher for Passover

Kosher meat, poultry and seafood

The rules determining whether meat is kosher draw from the Torah, or the texts comprising Judaism.
These guidelines determine whether meats are kosher:

Land mammals with cloven (split) hooves that chew cud are kosher. So if you keep kosher, it's appropriate to eat meat from cows, sheep and goats — but it's not appropriate to eat meat from pigs and rabbits.
Water-dwelling creatures with fins and scales — providing the fins and scales come off easily — are kosher. Examples of kosher fish include salmon and tuna. If you keep kosher, you can't eat shellfish, including shrimp, crab and lobster.
Many birds, including chickens, geese and ducks, make kosher meals. But birds of prey aren't kosher according to the Torah — so you can't eat them. Some people who keep kosher eat turkey, while others avoid it, although today, turkey is widely regarded as kosher.

Dairy rules and kosher eating

Like the kashrut guidelines for meat, the rules outlining dairy product consumption in a kosher diet are exacting. They are as follows:

Under kashrut, one bit of dairy renders a food dairy. Similarly, one bit of meat renders a food meat. However, there is a third category of foods, containing neither meat nor dairy, called pareve. Baked goods made exclusively with dairy free or soy products, for example, are pareve.
To keep kosher, you eat meat and dairy in a certain order. If you've eaten meat, you wait three to six hours before eating dairy products to ensure your mouth is free of lurking meat particles. However, if you ate dairy first, you can eat meat after rinsing your mouth and eating a pareve solid.
If baked goods are made with both animal shortening and dairy products, they can't get a kosher designation. Kosher equivalents use only dairy ingredients. To receive a pareve designation, baked goods cannot contain dairy or animal products.
Fish and eggs aren't true "meat" under kashrut, so you may eat them with dairy products.

Produce: Almost always kosher

Under kashrut guidelines, produce is widely considered kosher. There are only two notable exceptions to this rule:

Produce selections containing even the tiniest bugs or other pests are not kosher. Thus, if you home-grow your produce and keep kosher, inspect produce to check for pests.
Items made from grapes must receive special kosher designations. Examples of such items include cream of tartar, wine and grape-flavored drinks. This rule dates back to Torah laws against eating products of idolatry.

Cooking kosher

To ensure a kosher kitchen, you must follow certain guidelines for serving meals and for using and handling cooking tools — including serving spoons, pans and pots.

The following points provide a brief overview of kosher cooking practices:

To make a meal kosher, you keep meat and dairy products separate. You prepare these foods with separate cooking utensils and cookware, serve them on separate plates, eat them with separate cutlery, and eat them at different times.
Typically, when keeping kosher, you need two separate sets of cooking utensils, food handling items and clean-up items — including towels, sponges and pot holders.
If your kosher kitchen includes a dishwasher, you must run the dishwasher empty between washing a load of meat-designated cookware and a load of dairy-designated cookware.

Kosher for Passover

If you keep kosher for Passover, the above-mentioned rules apply to your food preparation. In addition, the following rules apply:

Chametz — defined by the Torah as grains that have come into contact with water for more than 18 minutes — is prohibited during Passover. Chametz, or grain that's been fermented (or has the potential to become fermented) occurs in common foods and drinks such as bread and beer.
Chametz includes rye, oats, wheat, and barley. Therefore, if you keep kosher, you won't eat certain kosher products, such as kosher pareve cupcakes made with wheat flour, during Passover — because they contain chametz.
Depending upon how Judaism is observed, chametz is defined differently. For example, in one application of Jewish law, you might eat baking soda during Passover, while in another application, you won't.