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Hi, I'm planning to cook a dinner dish for my friends who are, in their own words, "Mildly kosher," meaning no pork, no shellfish, and no meat and milk together. The recipe I'd like to prepare (honey sesame chicken) contains chicken, eggs, and honey. I assume (please correct me if I'm wrong) all the other ingredients -- tamari sauce, rice wine, sesame oil, ketchup, brown sugar, cornstarch, pepper, sesame seeds, ginger, garlic, onions, and rice are okay -- but I don't know if the combination of chicken, eggs, and honey are kosher. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Yes, those 3 are kosher
But
Chicken, to be kosher, must be slaughtered and prepared according to Jewish law. Eggs must also be checked for blood spots.
If your guests are only worried about meat and milk then those are fine.
Yes, those 3 are kosher
But
Chicken, to be kosher, must be slaughtered and prepared according to Jewish law. Eggs must also be checked for blood spots.
If your guests are only worried about meat and milk then those are fine.
Yes. my friends would be concerned only about meat and milk together. I wasn't sure if chicken (parent) and egg (child) would be equivalent to meat and milk. And I wasn't sure about honey, with or without the other ingredients. Thank you for letting me know!
The title of the Paul Simon song was from the name of an item me saw on a menu.
However the song lyrics were inspired by a pet dog that was run over and killed.
(1972 Rolling Stone article)
“Last summer we had a dog that was run over and killed, and we loved this dog. It was the first death I had ever experienced personally.
Nobody in my family died that I felt that. But I felt this loss — one minute there, next minute gone, and then my first thought was, ‘Oh, man, what if that was [my wife] Peggy? What if somebody like that died? Death, what is it, I can’t get it.’ And there were lyrics straight out forward like that: “I can’t for the life of me remember a sadder day. I just can’t believe its so.†Those are the lyrics. Somehow there was a connection between this death and Peggy and it was I don’t know what the connection was. Some emotional connection. It didn’t matter to me what it was. I just knew it was there."
And yes Paul Simon's father grew up in home where Yiddish was spoken, and his grandfather a tailor immigrated from Galicia to New York in 1903 at age 15. Although Paul Simon's father worked as a musician, his family urged him to study law. "His parents nicknamed him “Cardozo,†after Benjamin Cardozo, the second Jewish Supreme Court justice (Louis Brandeis was the first). Law school was their dream for young Paul, and even toward the end of the 1960s, when Simon & Garfunkel rivaled the Beatles in popularity and sales, his father still said to him, “Is that all you want? To be a rock star? Teach! Teach!… That’s the only important thing.â€
A nice Jewish boy wrote a song called "Mother and Child Reunion" after having a chicken-and-egg dish of that name at a Chinese restaurant.
I see the irony in that menu item's title that you mentioned, MQ. I can also see why the OP had hesitation and questions about a dish containing chicken ("mother") and egg ("child") together, when Torah tells us "you shall not cook a kid in its mother's milk" (the source of our dietary law against mixing meat with dairy).
Some have said that this law is based on the presumption that cooking a baby goat in its mother's milk is an act of insensitivity and cruelty and, if that were the case, then cooking chicken and eggs together would seem to be equally insensitive.
But I have read from other rabbis that the prohibition against boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk was actually due to an aversion to an ancient pagan fertility rite which encompassed this very thing. And thus we separate meat from dairy to this day. We do this obviously because Torah commands us to, but there is also historical evidence that the mixing of meat and dairy was a practice of pagan peoples. Our prohibition against this practice enabled the separation of the Jewish people from other peoples -- for if Jews did not join with Gentiles in their feasts and other celebrations, then Jews would be less likely to become assimilated by other cultures.
I had read the story of the childhood pet dog that inspired the lyrics, too, but I got a kick out of the Chinese menu item for the title. I am a Paul Simon fan.
I too always thought mixing eggs and chicken was weird, but I am not Jewish and it had nothing to do with religion. Just seemed odd, and I'm probably not the only one. You don't see chicken omelets offered on diner menus.
Interesting about some of the dietary rules having to do, in part, with keeping separate from the surrounding people. That was always what my non-Jewish father told us was the reason for a lot of the dietary and other rules in Judaism, to keep the nation separate by not taking on the practices of other tribes in the area, particularly upon entering the Promised Land after the Exodus and the years in the desert.
But I do understand that at the heart of it for a Jew, it's because Torah says so.
I see the irony in that menu item's title that you mentioned, MQ. I can also see why the OP had hesitation and questions about a dish containing chicken ("mother") and egg ("child") together, when Torah tells us "you shall not cook a kid in its mother's milk" (the source of our dietary law against mixing meat with dairy).
Some have said that this law is based on the presumption that cooking a baby goat in its mother's milk is an act of insensitivity and cruelty and, if that were the case, then cooking chicken and eggs together would seem to be equally insensitive.
But I have read from other rabbis that the prohibition against boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk was actually due to an aversion to an ancient pagan fertility rite which encompassed this very thing. And thus we separate meat from dairy to this day. We do this obviously because Torah commands us to, but there is also historical evidence that the mixing of meat and dairy was a practice of pagan peoples. Our prohibition against this practice enabled the separation of the Jewish people from other peoples -- for if Jews did not join with Gentiles in their feasts and other celebrations, then Jews would be less likely to become assimilated by other cultures.
Nice post and very informative, thanks.
Do you think perhaps both reasons -- insensitivity/cruelty *and* pagan peoples' practice -- are why this custom came about? Or just the latter reason?
I was interested in the kosher aspect of honey, because I didn't know if bees, who make the honey, are themselves considered unkosher. And, if they are unkosher, how can their product (honey) be considered kosher?
I was interested in the kosher aspect of honey, because I didn't know if bees, who make the honey, are themselves considered unkosher. And, if they are unkosher, how can their product (honey) be considered kosher?
that is an essential and insightful question
the underlying legal principle is that something that comes from a non-Kosher animal is not Kosher. So why the exception here? Basically because the biblical text explicitly permits honey
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I can also see why the OP had hesitation and questions about a dish containing chicken ("mother") and egg ("child") together, when Torah tells us "you shall not cook a kid in its mother's milk" (the source of our dietary law against mixing meat with dairy).
