Question
Hi Rabbi Sperling, how are you? I hope your Pesach prep is going well. I’m actually writing about some non-Pesach related kitchen mishaps that happened and hoping for some guidance as to what to do. Thank you in advance.
1. I accidentally used a pareve silicone utensil to stir a hot meat dish in a pot on the fire. Due to the material, is the utensil forever fleishig?
2. I then accidentally used the same utensil (but clean and ayno ben yomo) that was in "cherem" to stir pareve food in a pareve pan on the fire. Did I "fleishigize" my pareve pan?
3. If I did "fleishigize" my pareve pan, can I kasher it to return it to pareve status (it has a teflon coating or something like teflon)? Also, must I dissassemble it to do so?
4. I found a splatter on a pareve pot’s lid that was sitting nearby when I was cooking fleishigs in a pot on the fire, so I’m presuming it was splatter from the fleishig dish. I cleaned it with soap. Is the lid now considered fleishig? If yes, and I want to return it back to it’s pareve status, can I do so because it’s got multiple pieces (the metal rim, the glass, the lid’s knob held on by a screw, etc). I can remove the knob but can’t remove the glass from the metal rim that holds it.
5. To "kasher" a utensil that was used incorrectly with a hot food of the opposite gender, is it correct that I just need to take an ayno ben yomo pot on the fire with boiling water and drop the utensil inside? Does the material of the kashering pot matter (ceramic, teflon coated) or the gender of the pot (fleshig, pareve, milchig)? What if the object is too big to fully immerse in the pot (a lid that is very wide and can be dunked in sections but not all at once?
With very much appreciation at this busy time,
Answer
Shalom,
As usual it's a pleasure to answer your questons:-
1. The silicone stirring spoon may be koshered by hagalah – that is, after not using it for 24 hours, immersing it in a pot of boiling water, then running it under cold water. It will then be parve again.
2. The silicone spoon was used after 24 hours had passed, so no meat taste came out from it, and so your parve food and utensils remain parve.
3. As we saw in answer #2 the pan is still parve and doesn't need koshering.
4. Because the food in the pot was parve, and the splatter was small, it was nullified by the food cooking in the pot which was at least 60 times the amount of the splatter. So everything retains its parve status. (If it was a large splattering, then get back to me).
5. To kosher a utensil that became unkosher when used in a pot (as opposed to things that where used in the oven, which need a stricter liboon koshering), the process is as you said – immersing them into a boiling pot of water. The untensil to be koshered, and the pot used to immerse into should be clean and not ben yomo – and it does not matter if it's meat or milk, nor what it's made of. Large utensils may be immersed section by section.
Blessings.
