Buying and Handling Meat

Most kosher meat reaches you already slaughtered, inspected and kashered. What remains is knowing what to establish before you buy it and how to keep it right afterwards.

What to establish

• Has it been kashered? Meat sold kashered has been rinsed, soaked, salted and rinsed again. Meat sold unkashered has not, and the obligation passes to you.
• Has nikur been done? Certain fats and veins must be removed by a trained menaker before salting. This is not something to take on trust or to do yourself.
• Is the liver still in? A bird's liver is removed before the bird is cooked or broiled. Liver is kashered by broiling, not salting, and cannot simply travel along with the rest.
• Minced meat and sausage need particular care — see below.

Minced meat

The rule is sequence: meat is kashered before it is ground, never after. That holds even for meat destined for broiling, such as kebabs or patties — kasher first, then mince.

Where unkashered meat has been minced, some hold that salting afterwards cannot rescue it. Once ground, every particle is effectively its own piece and would need salt on all its surfaces, which cannot be achieved. Others permit broiling it after the fact instead.

The practical consequence when shopping is that minced meat and made-up products such as sausage carry a step you cannot verify by looking. They are worth buying from a source whose process you actually know.

Frozen meat

Freezing does not kasher anything, and it interacts with the process in ways worth knowing.

Meat frozen before it was kashered must be fully thawed before salting — salt cannot draw blood from a frozen surface. Poultry frozen unkashered follows the same rules.

And there is a timing limit. Where meat has stood too long without being kashered, salting is no longer the route and broiling becomes the question instead. The same three-day consideration governs liver.

So unkashered meat is not something to leave in a freezer indefinitely on the assumption it can be dealt with later.

Keeping it separate

A small practical instruction worth passing on: meat should be wrapped in sealed packaging when placed in a basket together with fruit and vegetables, so it does not stain them with blood.

That has an obvious application to a shopping bag and a fridge shelf, and it is the kind of thing that prevents a question rather than answering one.

Poultry and beef together

Poultry may be kashered together with animal meat — they need not be done separately.

What your household needs, and what your butcher actually does, is worth establishing once rather than assuming. Ask your rav about anything unclear. See also how melichah works.