I have cooked only pareve foods in my kitchen for some time now, but I want to start cooking meat. I will continue to not cook dairy and I want to just have one set of dishes. The only complication is that I use some vegan products like almond milk that have a DE hechsher. Do I need to kasher my dishes? If not, can I continue to use these products with my meat dishes? Does it make a difference whether I’m Sefardi or Ashkenazi? Thank you!

Shalom, Thank you for your question. The meaning of the DE letters on a kashrut label mean as follows (copied from the COR website) “The DE designation which stands for “Dairy Equipment” means that a hot product, while pareve in its essence, has been manufactured using equipment that was also used to manufacture hot dairy products where no kosherization occurred in between. It is important to note that a thorough cleaning of the equipment still occurs between production runs and there is absolutely no dairy products contained in an item labeled DE. Thus, from the standpoint of the kosher consumer, if someone has just completed a meat meal, he may then eat a product labeled DE. He cannot however eat something labeled DE during a meat meal.” This concept is called “nat bar nat” in halacha (or secondary taste). Such foods would not have made your parve dishes “milky”. Such a product may be used even hot on meat dishes. However, an Ashkanazi may not mix such a product with meat foods. If it was mixed with meat foods (by mistake, or by a Sephardi Jew), the resultant mixture is however permitted. Blessings.