Bitul B’shishim - Pot Status (Cont'd)

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

ANSWER: In this case, since the soup is more than sixty times the volume of the butter, the taste of the butter will be batel b’shishim (nullified in 60) in the soup and there will be no requirement to kasher the pot. However, because butter is a fat, when left to cool, it will float to the top of the soup. Whenever there is a method to remove a forbidden food from a mixture, one is not permitted to leave it behind. The Rema (YD 98:4) discusses a similar situation in which forbidden fat fell into a pot of soup. Even if it is batel b’shishim, the soup still may not be eaten until one first cools the soup and skims off the fat. Therefore, in this case too, one must cool down the soup and skim off all the congealed butter before the soup may be eaten.

Note that even though the butter will be removed in the end, there still must be sixty times more soup than butter. We do not say that removing it in the end means that we have removed its taste as well (Taz and Shach YD 98:4). This is based on what was discussed in a prior Halacha Yomis. It is not enough to have sixty times what actually dissolved into the soup. We need shishim against all possible taste that may have been imparted by the issur.

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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.