Bitul B’shishim - Pot Status

QUESTION:  A slice of cheese with the volume of one fluid ounce fell into a pot that was cooking sixty-four fluid ounces of meat sauce. What is the status of the pot? What is the status of the sauce?

ANSWER: In this case, the sauce was more than sixty times the volume of the cheese. Since the cheese was batel b’shishim (nullified in more than sixty parts of sauce), we assume that the cheese is incapable of imparting taste into the sauce, and the pot does not require kashering. However, the status of the sauce itself is not so simple. As long as any strands of cheese are discernible in the sauce, those strands are not batel and the sauce may not be eaten. Furthermore, one may not stir the sauce with the intention to cause the cheese to melt and disappear into the sauce, since one is not permitted to be mevatel issur lichatchila (actively nullify forbidden foods). One should throw away the meat sauce, since it contains strands of cheese, but one does not need to kasher the pot, since the cheese is less than 1/61th of the mixture.

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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.