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  • Halacha
  • Separate Dishes

Is pan and toaster fleishig?

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Rabbi David Sperling

Shevat 30, 5773
Question
Hi , I have a toaster that I used only for pareve items. Then one Erev Shabbat, out of necessity, I used the dark enamel pans that come with the toaster as a base upon which I set my fleshig pots on top of a blech. The fleishig pots may very well have leaked or had fleishig stuff on the bottom of them (in contact with the pans). I am wondering the status of the pans and anything (veggies usually) that I cook in them in my toaster. Have I made my pans fleishig and made my toaster fleishig? If so, how can I make them pareve again? Thank you.
Answer
Shalom, Thank you for your question - it sounds like it was a hectic erev Shabat! In general, and for future knowledge, you should have put some foil down over the pans before you put the pots of (meat) food on them, so that any spills would not have gone through onto the pans. If you had done that, we would not have had any doubt about ruling that the pans are still parve. However, if food did indeed leak onto them, and the blech was hot, then they adsorbed the meat taste and became "meaty". Because in your case the pan did not absorb anything forbidden, but rather just the meat taste into a parve pan, the laws of koshering it are more simple than if it had absorbed meat into a milk pan etc. In this case it would be enough just to boil the pan up in strongly boiling water, or to heat it up in the oven (or toaster) till it gets very hot. (This should be done after 24 hours has elapsed since it absorbed the meat). Even though there are Rabbis who hold that enamel cannot be koshered, in your case, where you are not certain that the food spilt onto the pans, we can certainly rely on this form of koshering. It is unclear from your question whether you have already used the pans (before koshering them) in your toaster. Even if you did this, the toaster is still parve - and (after the fact) the food you cooked was parve. Nonetheless it would be a good idea to kosher the pans in the way we wrote above before future use, as Ashkanazim try not to use even old meat pans for parve food that will be eaten with milk - even though after the fact it would all be kosher. Therefore you should try to avoid the situation by koshering the pans. Blessings.
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