Planning a Kosher Kitchen

Almost everything awkward about running a kosher kitchen is decided before anyone cooks in it. Two sets bought together are cheaper than two sets assembled after a mistake, and a second work surface costs almost nothing at the planning stage.

Two sets, bought as two sets

When buying for a kitchen or a home, plan from the outset for vessels suited to preparing meat food separately and dairy food separately — designated or marked as such.

That means two of each, across every category that touches food: pots, frying pans, utensils, plates, cutlery, cups, serving dishes and the rest.

Mark the dairy ones — and only the dairy ones

Here is a detail worth knowing, because the reasoning is not obvious.

The custom is to mark the dairy vessels with a clear, visible marking, so they can be told apart from the meat ones and nobody uses them by mistake.

And it is specifically the dairy vessels. One should not reverse it and mark the meat ones instead — even though you would know your own kitchen perfectly well. The reason is that most people mark the dairy vessels, so anyone else in your kitchen will read an unmarked item as meat. Reversing the convention makes your kitchen unreadable to a guest, a helper or a family member.

It is a small instruction with a larger idea in it: a kitchen is used by more people than the person who set it up.

Work surfaces

Install two work surfaces — the counter beside the sink is the one that matters — so meat preparation happens on one and dairy on the other.

Where there is only one, the rule is: never put hot food or a hot pot of any kind on it directly, or cover it first. Otherwise the surface takes on a status, and the next hot pot of the other kind placed there becomes a problem.

What does not need doubling

Usefully, the hob does not.

In a private home there is no need for separate hobs. You may cook meat after dairy on the same one, or the reverse. Nor do the grates the pots stand on need separating — because if food spills onto the hob or the grates, the flame burns it away.

Some who are meticulous keep a small separate hob for dairy, but that is a stringency rather than the requirement.

The fridge

One fridge and freezer serves both, provided things are kept separate and do not move from one to the other. So when buying, plan a designated place for dairy — a door shelf or the bottom compartment.

Two practical cautions follow from how fridges actually behave:

• Do not put a dairy pot on a shelf above a meat one. The movement of the fridge can spill milk into the vessel below without anyone noticing.
• Nor a pot of meat soup above dairy food, for the same reason in reverse.

And if the interior light switches on when the door opens, arrange before Shabbos for it to be disabled.

Cabinets and storage

Plan cupboards so meat and dairy vessels are genuinely separated and cannot mix — separate places for pots, pans, plates and serving dishes; cutlery in separate drawers; and each drying rack kept in its own place.

One further point that surprises people: do not store or hang plates, cutlery, cups or other vessels high above the hob you cook on. Cooking vapour rises and reaches them while it is still hot.

What your own kitchen needs is a question for your rav — and it is a far better conversation to have with a floor plan than with a finished kitchen.

See also which comes first, kashering or tevilah.