Zeiya - Spices

QUESTION: I add spices to my chicken soup while it is cooking on the stove. If I pour spices directly from the spice container into the hot pot of soup, does this make the spices fleishigs? Can I use these spices with dairy foods?

ANSWER: The steam and water vapor that comes from a pot of chicken soup are like the soup itself. If the soup is fleishigs, these vapors are also fleishigs. If the spices are placed right above the soup, such that the spices intersect with the vapors, some taste of meat will be absorbed into the spices. It is therefore proper to consider them fleishigs. Bedieved (after the fact), if one used the spices afterwards for dairy, one may assume that the amount of meat taste in the spices is minimal and is batel, and the food remains kosher. If one held the spice container higher up above the pot, in a place where the steam dissipates and does not intersect with the spices, the spices would remain pareve. However, the best practice is to pour the spices into one’s hand or a fleishig cup and add the spices from the cup to the pot.

___________________________________________________

The Gerald & Karin Feldhamer OU Kosher Halacha Yomis is dedicated to the memory of Rav Yisroel Belsky, zt"l, who served as halachic consultant for OU Kosher for more than 28 years; many of the responses in Halacha Yomis are based on the rulings of Rabbi Belsky. Subscribe to the Halacha Yomis daily email here.