Aino Ben Yomo - Pan Kashering

QUESTION: I accidentally cooked chicken in my milchig frying pan. The frying pan had not been used for dairy for more than 24 hours. How do I kasher the pan?

ANSWER: In general, there are two methods of kashering. If non-kosher food was cooked in a pot with liquid, the pot is kashered by immersion in boiling water. This is known as hagolah. If non-kosher food was cooked directly on a fire, the spit or grate must be kashered with intense heat, which is known as libun. The Shulchan Aruch (YD 121:4) rules that a non-kosher frying pan is similar to a spit, and kashering would be with libun. This can be achieved by leaving the pan in an oven during a self-cleaning cycle.  

The requirement to kasher a spit or frying pan with libun applies only when kashering from non-kosher use. (This is called isurah bala, which means the pan absorbed non-kosher.) However, if a pareve frying pan was accidentally used with dairy, the pan can be kashered with hagolah. Since the absorption of milk in the pan was heterah bala, (the absorbed milk is kosher), libun is not necessary.

In determining what method of kashering is appropriate in our scenario of chicken fried in a dairy pan after 24 hours, we must consider if the absorption is heterah (in which case hagolah will suffice) or isurah (in which libun is necessary).

On the one hand, it can be argued that the absorption is heterah. Since the pan was not used for dairy for more than 24 hours, the ta’am of dairy is pagum. When the pan was subsequently used for chicken, the dairy ta’am was batel, and both the pan and the chicken remain kosher. As such, it would appear to be heterah bala, and hagolah should suffice.  

On the other hand, in practice, the pan cannot be used for meat or dairy without kashering. (See Shulchan Aruch YD 93:1. The Rema in 94:5 writes that the minhag is to not use the pan at all, even for pareve.) It cannot be used for dairy because it absorbed chicken, and it cannot be used for meat because it absorbed milk. Even though the pan is aino ben yomo (24 hours elapsed since the dairy use), the Rabbis prohibited the use of the pan for meat because we do not rely on aino ben yomo lichatchila (because the Rabbis feared it would lead to confusion). Since in practice the pan cannot be used for meat or dairy, perhaps it should be considered isurah bala, and the pan can only be kashered with libun.

The Chasam Sofer (YD 110) addresses this question and rules that we consider the pan heterah bala since there is no actual forbidden ta’am in the pan, and hagalah suffices. As a stringency, he adds that if kashering the frying pan with hagalah one should perform hagalah three times. Alternatively, one can kasher with libun kal (a light form of libun) which can be accomplished by placing the pan in a regular oven at 550º F for an hour. 

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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.