Disclaimer: I am not an expert. I’m an enthusiastic amateur. When in doubt, please ask your Rabbi (or your Rabbi’s spouse). Also, if I’m getting anything wrong, please correct me in the comments! (Also I am Masorti rather than Orthodox, again, your Rabbi and your specific halachim know better than I do!)

I get questions sometimes with my book–the most recent being “If a Rabbi blessed the blood before the vampire drank it, would it be kosher?” Unfortunately, no.

So, for a food to be kosher (literally “proper” or “fit”), it needs to

1. Come from a plant or a kosher animal (or be something like milk or eggs of a kosher animal, or honey)
2. If it is meat from an animal, the animal must have been killed in a humane way (there are rules)
3. It must not contain any blood
4. It must be prepared in a kosher way
5. Mixtures of milk and meat are forbidden

So, let’s break that down.

Come from a plant: All whole fruits and vegetables are kosher. Do examine them closely to make sure you’re not accidentally eating bugs (ew).

Come from a kosher animal: This is where people start to find it confusing, but there’s a list of dos and don’ts in the Bible. If you’d like the list rendered in hootenany song, check out this video. But it’s basically:

• Land animals:
  • Any animal with cloven hooves that chews its cud is okay, so
    • Yes examples: Cows, sheep, goats
    • No examples: Pigs, rabbits, skunks, hedgehogs…
• Water animals:
  • Any thing with fins and scales, so:
    • Yes examples: salmon, trout, tuna
    • No examples: crab, shrimp, octopus, squid
• Bird (and bird-like?) animals
  • Generally, if it’s not a bird of prey, it’s okay
    • Yes examples: Chicken, turkey
    • No examples: Bats, vultures, American bald eagles
• Bugs
  • Most are forbidden, there are a couple that are okay that have been lost to the mists of time because no one wants to eat bugs anyway
    • Nope!
• Things that creep around on the ground, like snakes and worms
  • Nope nope nope
    • Nope!

Milk from approved land animals and eggs from approved birds are fine. Just don’t mix that milk with meat.

Kosher slaughter: There are rules–the knife must be very sharp, it must be discarded if there is a nick in it, the goal is for the animal to pass out immediately… but I’m a vegetarian and this topic makes me uncomfortable. That said, it’s strictly forbidden to do things like chop an animal’s leg off and eat it and leave the poor animal to suffer on three legs. Nothing cut off a living animal.

Must not contain blood: This is serious business, you guys. Leviticus 17:10-12 is emphatic. “The blood is the life,” and the life is for G-d. Jews are usually pretty chill about what their neighbors are eating, but Leviticus says to not let your non-Jewish neighbors drink blood, either. Pretty inconvenient for any friendly neighborhood vampires. 😉 So meat is soaked and salted to remove any blood before it’s cooked (usually before it’s sold in the US), and you don’t just crack an egg into your mixing bowl, you crack it into a cup and look for blood. NO BLOOD.

Prepared in a kosher way: If you take your kosher hot dogs and put them in a pan that was previously used to make pork chops or beef stroganoff, they are no longer kosher. Yes, your dishes and utensils and pots and pans also have to be kosher. It’s a thing. Most Orthodox mikvehs have a place to kasher (make kosher) your dishes and pans, but less strict folks just buy new. Workarounds include:

• Salads prepared in a brand new plastic tupperware container (that’s only used for kosher food henceforth)
• Oven meals prepared in disposable foil pans
• Wrapping the food in foil before cooking it
• Eggs come in their own kosher wrapper. You can hard-boil them in any pan.
• Eating your fruits and veggies raw and whole is always okay. Please don’t chop them up with a knife previously used on pork chops.
• If you’re keeping kosher, you have two sets of pans–one for milk and one for meat. Yes, seriously. Be a vegetarian, it’s easier. 😉 Do not make mac and cheese in your beef stew pan, that is not kosher even if the beef, the cheese, etc., were all kosher. This leads us neatly into:

Mixing milk and meat: This is mentioned not once but THREE TIMES in the Bible, and in the days before the printing press when books were written by hand, this was considered a sign of being very important. “Do not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.” Some people think this was a pagan ritual? But it’s a no-no. So:

• I can not haz cheeseburger (sorry)
• No Beef Stroganoff or Swedish Meatballs
• You can’t even have a chicken and cheese sandwich, even though chickens are not mammals
• Separate dishes, pots, pans, eating utensils
• Some people wait a number of hours between a milk and a meat meal (It has been decades since my last meat meal so I’m not concerned!)
• Do not chop up cheese with your meat knife

You do see workarounds like Beef Stroganoff made with coconut milk instead of dairy, or Impossible veggie burgers with cheese. Again, I’m a vegetarian anyway, but this is the point where some folks nope out. 😀

The separate utensils thing: glass is exempt! Some people have glass dishes. Some very strict people consider glass dishes to be “cheating” and disapprove. The idea is that if a thing is considered porous (I know, I know, metal pots and pans, but you know… handles? food residue?) it must be kept separated. It goes all the way to separate fridges in strict households. If you’re not that strict, at the very least don’t pile an open kosher hot dog package on top of your cheese (ew). Wrap it in plastic and set it on the other side of the shelf.

Fruits, vegetables, and eggs are considered neither and you don’t need to worry about mixing them with your meat or your milk. Yay!

The separate utensils thing is also why when you see kosher restaurants, they are either a “milk” restaurant or a “meat” restaurant. Honestly, this is super helpful if you have other food issues, or are vegetarian or vegan. Lactose intolerant? You’re pretty much guaranteed to not get any dairy at a kosher “meat” restaurant. (You might find fish at the vegetarian restaurant, because fish don’t have red blood so they’re not considered “meat.” Alas… but convenient if you’re just trying to avoid red meat.)