A couple of years ago, Cooks Illustrated did a taste test, roasting various turkeys, including fresh, frozen, and kosher without brining them and the kosher came out best. I can’t link to the info on their website because you’d have to pay to see it and it’ll be a while before I can find the issue in question at home, but there was a difference. On the other hand, these people are somewhat fanatical and good at picking up subtle differences, something I’m not.
As for the juiciest turkey I’ve had, for the past two years at Thanksgiving, my family’s had deep-fried ones. Yes, it sounds outlandish, but it takes much less time to cook and is very tasty turkey, even when produced by non-cooks like my family. It may be heresy, but it’s tasty heresy!
It sounds like I would like kosher foods. I love dry turkey. The drier the better. I smother mine with gravy. I also like my beef cooked extra well done — enough to have a crispy coating. I smother it with steak sauce or mustard or what-have-you.
I have eaten kosher and non-kosher turkeys, and I can definitely say that kosher turkeys don’t inevitably come out drier than non-kosher turkeys. How you cook the turkey matters a lot more. I grew up eating non-kosher turkeys, all of which were quite dry. Since I’ve started keeping kosher, I’ve found out about brining turkeys (and not overcooking them), which makes them a lot less dry.
And you’re not eating “the exact same substance” when you eat kosher and non-kosher turkey. The blood is drained out of kosher meat and poultry, so you could be eating blood in a non-kosher turkey that you wouldn’t get in a kosher turkey.
Most definitely not, which is what makes this deception all the more heinous. If someone tried to pass off pork to me as kosher, I’d notice it right away. That wouldn’t happen with a non-kosher turkey.
Actually, no. For a vegetarian or vegan who has been without meat or meat products, consuming unknown meat products can be painful. I was a vegan for two years - I had not eaten any meat or broth or flavorings for about six months when I accidentally ate stir fry flavored with chicken broth. It was some painful stomach distress for me - nothing life-threatening, obviously, but it wasn’t pleasant at all. I was a little more careful about what I ate from then on.
When I reintroduced meat into my diet, I had to do it somewhat slowly - otherwise, I was setting myself up for the same stomach distress.
Technically speaking, fish are not classified in Jewish law the same way that meat is. That’s why one could eat fish with dairy, but not meat.
As a practical matter, drinking fish blood is prohibited by a Rabbinical decree, lest an observer think that he is drinking animal blood. However, if one leaves fish scales in the drink, it will then be obvious to an observer that it is fish blood and is permitted.
Where’s that puking smiley? I read this thread, no problem. I eagerly seek out poo threads and other TMI threads to read, sometimes while eating. But the thought of drinking fish blood with scales in it- that made me queasy.
I once had a Muslim friend ask me if I could tell the difference between halal and non-halal beef. I had cooked some Pakistani dishes with authentic recipies and from food purchased at a local Pakistani market so it was halal. I told him I couldn’t tell the difference at all.
Still, the poor yid who may end up eating non-kosher turkey probably wouldn’t be in jepoardy of losing spiritual ground IIRC. Being tricked or forced to consume non-halal foods, or consuming them out of just plain ignorance, wouldn’t cause problems according to my Muslim friend. I would imagine Judaism has a similar out. It just isn’t possible for everyone to be a butcher and a single dishonest butcher could really screw over a lot of unsuspecting individuals. G-d presumably knows that they were not intentionally flaunting his commands and therefore they kept covenant, as far as they were aware.
Technically, you are right. But this is operating on the premise that “what you don’t know won’t hurt you” This is wrong, pure and simple. Let’s say a man has screws his secretary. If he decides not to tell his wife then her heart won’t be shattered, right? But then she is being deceived into believing she is married to a faithful man.
These so called “friends” are going to deceive this woman into thinking she is consuming a kosher turkey, when in fact, it’s not. Granted boils are not going to erupt on her skin but her beliefs are being disrespected. Shitty.
A quibble, since the gist of the post was really abour lying to your friends about what you are feeding them (abhorrent!) – but isn’t poultry considered meat as a rabinnical “technicality?” IOW – isn’t it true that at some point poultry was decreed to be like meat in order to avoid both confusion and Mar’ith Ayin (“looks like” meat)?
Because in that case, the whole question of Koshering poultry is really just a “safety mechanism”, not truly required by god, and the technical question of the “koshered” vs non-“koshered” turkey becomes moot.
(And lying about it is still scummy, whether it is relevant to religious law or not)
“Kosher Salt” is sort of a confusing term. It’s not actually the salt that’s kosher. “Kosher salt” is simply large-grained salt used to drain excess bodily fluids from meat - and that is a requirement for Kosher Goodness. So - Kosher salt is neither kosher nor non-kosher, but it’s a tool for making meat kosher.
Of course. IAAVBLJ (I Am A Very Badly Lapsed Jew), so take this with a grain of…er…salt.
I’d like to expand on this point. It’s worth mentioning that, if memory serves, kosher meat must be slaughtered in the most painless way practicable. In other words, one can be reasonably sure that kosher-slaughtered animals were not subjected to unneccsessary cruelty. If you’re not a vegetarian, but prefer that one’s meat be treated humanely before it’s Shuffled Off This Mortal Coil, that could be significant - just as a vegetarian might find it morally objectionable to eat meat at all.
Just to be clear, Cook’sencourages brining for non-kosher and non-self-basting turkeys. They discourage brining of kosher and self-basting turkeys because those birds have, essentially, already been brined and will be too salty if you brine them again yourself. I was just last night rereading an issue where they measured sodium levels. IIRC, turkey brined according to their directions had around .21 mg of sodium (per some unit I don’t remember), kosher turkeys had .27, and self-basting turkeys had more than brined but less than kosher. (Sorry, I wasn’t really concentrating on the exact numbers.)
And according to Cook’s, kosher and sea salt tends to be less salty than regular salt (per measure), due to the size difference. If you use kosher or sea salt, you have to adjust your recipes to use more than you’d use of regular granulated salt. They don’t recommend it for baking & such because it doesn’t dissolve as well. However, if you’re using it as a garnish-type seasoning (like on top of pretzels), then it works better.
And yes, lying to someone about what you’re feeding them is bad. If you don’t want to feed them something that fits their dietary choices (be it kosher/halal, vegetarian/vegan, non-alcoholic, non-fish/seafood, non-allergy, whatever), then don’t invite them. Or if you’re crass, you can invite them and tell them that there won’t be any food for them, so that they can at least make their own arrangements.
On the other hand, I can’t imagine that someone who’s willing to eat food prepared by someone as clueless as you overheard is really very concerned about keeping kosher. I’d be willing to bet good money that the lady you overheard doesn’t have a kashered kitchen, so as far as I understand, no meat that comes out of it will be kosher anyway. It could just be that her friend prefers kosher turkey for some non-religious reason. I know some people that buy kosher meats because they believe that the kosher products are fresher and of higher quality. (If we had any kosher butchers within a convenient distance, I’d give it a try myself.) So it may not be so much a disrespect of her religious beliefs as a choice to ignore someone she knows is just being picky and difficult for no good reason. I might feel the same way if, for instance, someone I’d invited to dinner tried to tell me what brand of hamburger I had to buy for her. Still no excuse to lie (I mean, go buy a spine and tell her you can’t afford to cater to her silly whims!), but not quite as scummy IMO.
Actually, if the person in question has been a vegetarian for some years, or from birth like some of my hippie-raised friends, meat *will * make them sick. No, I don’t have a site so this is anecdotal information, but I’ve seen it happen.
In case anyone was just dying to know, I checked my salt cans. Morton’s regular, iodized “table” salt does carry an OU certification, as does their “Kosher” salt. However, Safeway’s brand of table salt does not have a certification. So, you can have kosher and non-kosher table salt, depending on whether the packaging company chose to pay for the certification. Confusing enough?
Well, what this woman proposed to do was really fucking shitty. I don’t care whether you avoid a particular food for health, religious, political, or any other reason, the choice should be yours and yours alone to make. If people don’t want to accommodate your choice, they shouldn’t have to, but they should not try to deceive you into eating something that you would not otherwise eat.
I was interested by these observations by lee:
and
Well, i don’t pretend to know anything about the issue of kosher food, but it’s possible that this in this case the proud display of kosher certification could be largely a marketing tool.
The candy i purchased today made the proud claim that it is “100% fat free.” True enough, but this conveniently ignores the fact that it’s almost 100% sugar. The “fat free” part is a marketing tool that, while strictly correct, really bears very little relation to how healthy the candy is. Maybe the kosker claim is there for a similar purpose.
Well, i’m sure you’re probably just joking, but in case you’re not it’s worth pointing out that animals subjected to high levels of stress and trauma before and during the killing process tend to end up producing meat with a higher level of toxins than animals that are treated well and killed quickly and humanely.
I don’t see the need to debate this point, although some experts believe that our physiological make-up is far more akin to that of herbivores than to that of omnivores or carnivores.
But even if we are capable of eating both, the fact remains that if you don’t eat meat for a long time, suddenly eating it again can give you considerable grief, with stomach pains and assorted other unpleasant effects as the alimentary canal gets used to processing meat again. This might not have any long-term effects on a person’s health, but i’d say it qualifies as hurting him or her physically.
