If kosher means no pork or all beef (either one) where do they get off calling pickles kosher when their obviously not made of pork or beef?
Kosher doesn’t mean all beef.
Certain foods are prohibited (e.g. pork and shellfish). Meat must come from animals which have been slaughtered in a particular way and meat and dairy produce must be kept separate.
They “get off” on calling pickles kosher because they have been certified by the appropriate authority (in Britain, the Beth Din) as being kosher. This guarantees that no non-kosher food has been able to get into the pickles during their manufacture, for example, because other things are being produced in the same plant.
It also specifies whether they are kosher to be eaten with meat or with dairy produce.
Is it OK to put kosher pickles on a bacon cheeseburger? 
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Only during Passover.
Cecil’s take:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_351.html
Alright, I have a new question. Say you had a vat with 1,000 gallons of pickle juice and pickles in it. That’s not “kosher” or “non-kosher” because there’s no animal stuff at all in there.
And you add just a tiny bit, like someone accidently drops a drop of emulsifier in there that comes from an animal.
Does that make the entire batch non-kosher or kosher (whatever way it is) or not?
Also, is there a word that means that concept? (Not either kosher or non-kosher, something outside the rules).
Yes, the whole thing would be not Kosher if the emulsifier came from a non-Kosher source. Everything is either Kosher or not. There are some things that have neither meat nor dairy and are Kosher and that is called Pareve, Parve, or Parevine. No food can be cooked in the same pans or served in dishes that have had pork or seafood in them and be considered Kosher no matter how well it has been cleaned. And if the dishes were used to prepare dairy then it is not fit for preparing beef. Also, it must be noted on packages if food contains or has been processed on the same line with dairy. That’s what a “D” following a Kosher mark on packaged foods means. This is the extent of my knowledge which I have only learned because of food allergies to pork and dairy.
I’m still confused what Kosher salt is and I always thought that Kosher pickles were Kosher because they used Kosher salt.
Subject to the corrections of someone who knows more about the laws of kashrut than I (such as cmkeller or CKDextHavn), here’s the skinny:
Everything is either kosher or not (the usual term for “non-kosher” is tref, in any of several variant spellings, although that’s not strictly correct). If we can be assured that the vat in fact contains no animal-derived products, then it’s kosher (I’m leaving out the history of the vat; for purposes of discussion, we’ll assume that it’s never been tref). It’s also pareve; that is, its contents may be consumed with either meat (fleishig) or dairy (milchig).
The status of the emulsifier comes in. If it is kosher, then the vat and contents remain kosher (although no longer pareve). If it’s tref…I don’t know the responsa on the topic. By Torah and Talmud, a tref product accidentally mixed with a kosher product may be “neutralized”, depending on the amount (some tref products are never neutralized, and a deliberately added product is also never neutralized). My HWAG on the subject it that the pickles and the vat are tref; the vat can be re-koshered under certain circumstances, but the pickles are a dead loss from that point of view. However, if I were a mashgioch (kashrut supervisor), I’d have to consult a rabbi on that point.
“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”
AvenueB-dude:
Not true. It is kosher. Kosher means that it conforms to the dietary strictures dictated by the Torah. It is a word that applies to all foods. A food cannot be non-Kosher unless animal matter is somehow involved, but the presence of animal matter is not necessary in order for something to be Kosher.
There is no word for “neither Kosher nor non-Kosher” in the same way that there is no word for “neither true nor false.” (unless you count the Bill Clinton definition of perjury) A food is either OK for Jews to eat (Kosher) or it isn’t (non-Kosher).
SoMoMom:
Not true. There is a special procedure for making dishes “kosher” again, involving either extremely hot water, or actual fire (depending on the substance that the dishes are made of). There are some substances that can’t be made kosher once they’re non-kosher, but most can.
“Kosher salt” is actually a misnomer. What it really should say (and used to say) is “Koshering salt.” In order for meat to be Kosher, it must contain no blood. The best way for making sure meat is drained of blood is to salt it, specifically using coarse salt (if I recall correctly; I’m not an expert in the procedure myself). Salt that can be used for this purpose is known as Koshering salt, which has since been shortened to Kosher salt.
Kosher pickles have nothing to do with this specific kind of salt. They are kosher because they were made using no non-Kosher ingredients.
Chaim Mattis Keller
cmkeller@compuserve.com
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impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
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Mostly true, but you can re-kosher a cooking pan. IIRC, it involves a thorough cleaning, followed by burying the pot/pan, filled with stones, in the ground for a month. Not really worth the effort, but it can be done.
Kosher salt is the salt used to kosher meat. Kashruth is more than just what animal it comes from and how you kill it – kosher meats are treated with salt (either crusted with it or soaked in a brine) to leach out any remaining blood or contaminants, and otherwise finish the process.
While we’re on the subject: the part of the animal from which you get the meat also affects its kosher status – the hind quarters are off limits. Thus, beef can be kosher, but cow rectum is not. Granted, nobody would eat that anyway, but things like rump roast are verboten.
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I defer to cmkeller’s statements where they differ from mine – he follows the rules, I’m just familiar with them.
–Da Cap’n
“Playin’ solitaire 'til dawn
With a deck of fifty-one.”
Assuming the emulsifier is tref, which makes it issur (forbidden)… As far as I recall, there are two possibilities. The first, based on the Gemorah, is that the entire pickle vat becomes nevalah (prohibited in the same manner as the meat from an animal slaughtered in other than schita). The animal emulsifier (issur will osser (forbid) the pickles and their juice in their entirety.
The second view is that the “one part in sixty” rule would apply. I seem to recall that there is halachic authority for the proposition that issur in the mixture will only osser the mixture only if it is at least one part in sixty of the mixture. If it’s less than that proportion, it’s neutralized (as suggested above) by the majority and all the rest of the vat will be heter (permitted).
This is IIRC the din (law) of chaticha na asit nevalah abbreviated chanan).
Or maybe not. I just did a web search of “chanan” to no useful results, so either I am misspelling or misremembering. Don’t ask me; I’m Catholic 
.
- Rick
I am not aware of any variety of pickles which requires any non-kosher ingredients in its recipe. In other words, virtually any variety of pickles can be made to satisfy all the Jewish dietary requirements as explained above, and in fact, in the supermarkets in my area, almost all the brands and flavors of pickles do in fact have the mark of a kosher supervising organization.
The above paragraph is obviously talking about pickled cucumbers, pickled tomatoes, and pickled peppers, but not pickled pigs knuckles.
So, just to get back to the OP, what is the difference between “kosher pickles” and “sour pickles” or other named varieties? I think it simply means “Jewish pickles”, or “pickles of a flavor that used to be sold in ethnically Jewish areas before everyone else found out how good they are”. I also suspect (but might be wrong) that the recipe is exactly the same as for “dill pickles”, hence the term “kosher dills”.
I beg your pardon, Keeves, but I direct you to Cecil’s answer to this question, for which a link is posted above in this thread. He states:
It is beyond cavil that anything derived from an animal, however remotely, has a clear potential to be trefe.
- Rick
The arguement is technically valid, but a CRITICAL point is lost here. “Kosher” can also refer to a style. There are “kosher” style hot dogs and deli which are NOT technically certified “kosher”.
“Kosher” style pickels, etc. is a term used by advertisers to describe a particular taste reminiscent to New York style deli meat. Other inferences may exist, too.
I didn’t see where anyone mentioned this.
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what the frick do pickles have to do with meat? . . if your buying pickles that have meat-by products in them; i dont where the frickin picks come from . .
Good point.
Anyone can claim their product is kosher. In fact, from another Cecil column:
So if it’s just that the product “tastes” kosher, it won’t have the circled K or circled U on it…
- Rick
bda: Polysorbates, derived from animal fat, are sometimes added to the pickle brine as an emulsifier.
Man, I wish I had thought to post this earlier in the thread.
- Rick
Pickles have nothing to do with meat, but pickles have many styles. Of which, it is the “kosher style” that is often a favorite with deli (lunch meat, cold cut) sandwiches.
what the frick does salt have to do with meat? salts not a meat by-product either.
salt/pickles . . excuse me while i go eat a salty pickle and a pork chop . . wow . . livin on the edge in the year 2000. maybe the salad you had last night contained lettuce a pig peed on . . are you gonna die? . . maybe a cow drooled on that head of cabbage you steamed 2 nights ago . . are you gonna die? well guess what . . WHATEVER you are eating . . is not kosher. . because the soil it has grown in contains animal by-products . . soil in itself is composed of “dead” oganic material . . (ie; plant and animal material) . . there is no way to escape it. you are eating someones ancestors . . so your a cannibal . . like it or not. get over the “kosher” thing . . last time i looked. . it was year 2000.