This is not going to be exciting, but I've had a grin on my face all morning. I finally had a breakthrough in my understanding of how nullification/ביטול works with חנ''ן/the chunk becomes carrion, and cookware. Just to make this even more tempting, there will be an analogy with database administration.
Still here? I've given you fair warning.
I completely get that one ounce of milk that falls into less than 60 ounces of ground beef is not nullified. That means that when we cook this, we will now have just under 61 ounces of non-kosher "stuff". The technical term for that non-kosher "stuff" is נבלה/carrion. Why? For a Jew, any animal that is not slaughtered in accordance with Jewish law is considered as if it simply died; no better than roadkill.
Next time you are at Jewel and see all that red meat selling for a fraction of the price of kosher meat, just picture them driving along the highway, picking up any animal carcasses they find, cutting them into chunks, adding some nitrates to redden them up, plopping them onto Styrofoam trays, sealing them in clear plastic wrap, and placing them tastefully in the refrigerator section. Bon appétit.
Where I got lost was how a few drops of milk on the outside of a pan can be much, much worse than falling straight onto the food. Siman 92 in Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deiah discusses that situation. Just so you know, one drop of liquid is approximately 0.05 ml; 10 drops is half a milliliter. Let's say 10 drops of milk fall onto and soak immediately into your succulent pot roast. As long as there is more than about two tablespoons of meat in there, you are fine. (0.05 ml/drop * 10 drops * 60 for nullification = 1-ish fluid ounce.) If that same 10 drops of milk spatters on the outside of your pan that has the succulent pot roast squeezed in and the milk hits the pot below the level of the top of the meat, then you are still fine.
Now for the bad news. Let's say your pot roast is not squeezed into the pot, so it is sitting on the bottom but not touching the sides. Let's also say this pot is one you have had for a while and use it daily. (You really need to cut down on your red meat, but that is a different discussion.) if those same 10 drop spatter on the side of your pot, now need a piece of meat roughly the size of a one gallon milk jug (a little less, but that's the least of our problems) or you are in danger of having to throw the entire roast away! What happened??
A couple of things: חנ''ן and absorbed taste. One step at a time. First, חנ''ן: If you put just one tablespoon of milk into 59 tablespoons of beef soup, you now have 60 tablespoons/30 ounces of carrion. If that drops into 59*30 = 1770 ounces of beef soup.... you still only have 30 ounces of carrion. That is because the newly made carrion can't turn other innocent beef broth into carrion. In database administration terms, we would say that carrion has write access -- it can turn beef broth into carrion, but it does not have grant access -- it doesn't produce carrion that can again produce more carrion. It is חנ''ן not חנננננננננ''ן.
Second thing: absorbed taste in the walls of the pot is like beef broth in a cup. However, we don't know how much is actually absorbed, so -- as it is a Torah prohibition -- we need to be stringent and assume the walls of the pot are all but dripping in beef taste. So those 10 drops of milk transform up to just under 60 times their volume in beef taste into carrion, roughly one fluid ounce of pure carrion absorbed in the walls of your pot. Hence you need more than 60 times that -- just under the volume of a gallon size jug of milk -- to nullify it.
If it is erev Shabbos or you have guests coming, or you haven't used the pot in a few days, or some other stuff, then you might be ok. Rather than reading my blog, you are advised to call 773-539-4241 or 773-539-4141 (Midwest Beis Horaah). Amazing talmidei chachamim are waiting to take your call.
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