Salting and Marinating Meat and Milk

Q. Does the prohibition of cooking meat and milk apply to salting or marinating meat with milk?

A. There is a principle in halacha that maliach kirosayach (salting is considered hot) and kovush kimivushal (marinating for 24 hours is equivalent to cooking). Thus, if a non-kosher piece of meat was marinated for 24 hours or salted with kosher food, there is a transfer of taam (taste), and the kosher item becomes traif. One would have thought that that salting or marinating milk and meat together would be like cooking and the milk and meat would be forbidden, but that is not the case. Why? The Gemara (Pesachim 44b) explains that the prohibition of basar b’chalav is a chidush (novelty, which does not follow standards rules of halacha). Therefore, the prohibition of milk and meat is limited to standard bishul (cooking) as stated explicitly in the Torah, and we do not expand the prohibition to include salting and marinating. Although one does not violate the prohibition of cooking meat and milk by mixing them together so long as everything is cold, and one may benefit from this mixture as well (such as by feeding it to a pet), there is a Rabbinic prohibition to eat any mixture of milk and meat.

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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.