Pareve Soup Cooked in a Pareve Bowl in a Fleishig Microwave

I cooked a pareve soup in a pareve bowl in my fleishigs microwave. Is the food now fleishig? Can I still serve it at a milchig meal? What is the status of the bowl?

If a pareve soup is cooked in a pareve pot and a clean fleishig pot cover would be placed on the pot, we would consider the soup to be a nat bar nat (secondary taste) of fleishigs. The minhag of Ashkenazim is that we will not eat this food directly with dairy, but it may be eaten before or after dairy. The same would hold true in our case with the microwave. Since the steam from the food connects the bowl and the microwave, we would view the microwave as the “pot lid” on the bowl of soup. Regarding the bowl itself, it would remain pareve, provided it had been placed on a clean surface that did not have any meat residue.


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.