Melichah: How Meat Is Kashered

Blood is prohibited, and meat retains a great deal of it after slaughter. Melichah — salting — is how it is drawn out, and until it has been the meat may not be cooked.

Most people buy meat already kashered. Understanding the process is still worth it, because almost everything that goes wrong is a handling matter rather than a halachic one.

The sequence

1. Rinse. The meat is rinsed and cleaned of blood before anything else.
2. Soak. In water, in a vessel kept for the purpose, so the salt can take hold.
3. Salt. Coarse salt over the whole surface, on a board made for it.
4. Rinse again after the salting, in its own vessel.

Four vessels are involved and they are not interchangeable: one for soaking, one to salt on, one for rinsing afterwards, plus the coarse salt and ordinary water. Meat destined for broiling rather than cooking does not need them, because broiling works differently.

Why the board has holes in it

This is the detail that explains the whole design.

Blood and brine come out of the meat during salting, and if they pool underneath, the concern is that the meat reabsorbs them — undoing the entire exercise. So the meat is salted only where the liquid can run away freely.

Which produces a set of very practical instructions:

• The salting board is perforated, and the holes are checked to be open before use.
• The meat is laid so it does not block them.
• The board is raised — on a bucket or on legs — so the blood can fall away. Stood flat on a worktop or the floor, it is as though the meat were salted in an unperforated vessel.
• Some place twigs in the board so the meat cannot seal the holes.
• A smooth sloping surface that sheds liquid immediately also works.
• Nothing may fall onto the floor or into pooled blood during the salting.
• Not under a dripping tap or where rain can reach it — the salt would wash off before it has finished working.

The custom is to keep the salting board exclusively for this and use it for nothing else.

The salt itself

More particular than people expect.

Once only. Salt that has been used for salting may not be used again. If meat was salted with used salt and not yet cooked, it is rinsed and salted again with fresh. And salt that has been used for meat may not be eaten.

Salt used for fish is worse still — its strength is spent by the salting and by sitting in fish brine. If meat was salted with it and already cooked, the meat and the vessel are affected; if not yet cooked, rinse and re-salt.

Damp salt does not work. Wet or moist salt cannot absorb blood. It has to be dried — in sun or wind — until it will scatter properly across the meat.

Refined salt is a question. For someone who cannot have ordinary salt medically, the Acharonim divide: some permit it where a sick person needs meat, others hold that refining removes components and may leave it too weak to draw the blood out. Either way it is a question to ask rather than decide.

Where it goes wrong

Mincing before kashering. Meat should not be ground before it is kashered — and ground meat intended for broiling must be kashered before grinding. Where unsalted meat has been minced, some hold salting afterwards cannot help: each particle is now a separate piece needing salt on every side, which is not achievable. Others are lenient after the fact to broil it instead.

Salting before nikur. Meat that requires nikur — removal of forbidden fats and veins by a trained menaker — must not be salted first.

Skipping the first rinse. If meat was salted without being rinsed first, it is rinsed and salted again. Once it has been cooked, the position is much harder.

All of this is why meat is bought already kashered by someone who does it properly. What applies in your case is a question for your rav.