Kashering an Aino Ben Yomo

Q. Cheese blintzes were fried in a clean fleishig frying pan that had not been used for more than 24 hours (aino ben yomo). How do I kasher the pan?

A. As we have seen in a previous Halacha Yomis, a non-kosher frying pan requires libun, and a kosher frying pan (kashered when uncertain if dairy or fleishig) may be kashered with hagalah or libun kal. The question is how to categorize this frying pan. On the one hand, the pan was used with both milk and meat and it requires kashering. In this respect it is similar to a non-kosher frying pan. Nonetheless, the Chasam Sofer (YD 110) rules that since the pan was not used with meat in the past 24 hours (and for that reason the blintzes are kosher and may be eaten), the pan is not treated as a non-kosher vessel and hagalah suffices. (After 24 hours, the meat flavor that was in the pan is considered stale and will not give flavor to the blintzes.) As a stringency, he recommends that one should perform hagalah three times.

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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.