Milk & Meat - Melted Cheese

QUESTION: Do I need to wait six hours before I can eat meat after having eaten pizza? What about after eating eggplant parmesan?

ANSWER: Pizza is typically made with mozzarella cheese, which is aged for only one month and is not pungent. This is not considered a hard cheese, so there is no need to wait 6 hours.

Parmesan, however, is an aged cheese. The Yad Yehuda (89:30) maintains that one need not wait before meat after eating aged cheese that has been melted and mixed into a cooked food, such that the cheese is no longer noticeable. Although if meat is dissolved and mixed into another food, one must still wait 6 hours before eating dairy, being that the custom to wait after hard cheese is only a midos chasidus (exemplary behavior) and not an absolute requirement, in this case one may be lenient. The OU’s poskim have said that one may rely on this opinion. Therefore, if the pizza or eggplant parmesan is made with a combination of aged and non-aged cheeses, if the cheeses all melt together and are not independently noticeable, the leniency of the Yad Yehuda would apply, and one would not need to wait. However, if a pizza or eggplant parmesan was made exclusively with parmesan cheese, then one who eats this would need to wait.

As always, after eating any dairy food, even if the food is not made with aged cheese, one needs to clean and rinse his mouth and wash his hands before eating meat (Shulchan Aruch YD 89:2). Additionally, some have the custom to wait half an hour or an hour after all dairy before meat (Hagahos HaGra Y.D. 89:6 quoting Zohar).

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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.