Organizing a Kosher Kitchen - Resources

I recently worked with an Orthodox Jewish family to help them organize their Kosher kitchen.   It was so interesting and challenging that I thought I'd share some of the resources I found.  Keeping a Kosher kitchen means that food must be prepared, stored, and cooked according to Jewish religious law. A Kosher site called www.happyhomepage.com summarizes the approach as follows:

"Kosher food can be divided into three categories: meat, dairy and pareve. Meat and dairy foods are never eaten, cooked or washed together, but pareve foods may be eaten with either meat or dairy. One of the basic principles of Kosher is the total separation of meat and dairy products."

Organizing a Kosher kitchen is a significant challenge because in addition to separating the food, you have to separate EVERYTHING the food touches!  You can't just cook them in separate pots, and you cannot use a pot that has had meat in it to cook something with dairy in it.  So to maintain your kosher kitchen, you need at least 3 entire sets of dishes, pans, cooking and eating utensils - that NEVER touch each other! You can't even store them in the same drawer or cabinet. The kitchen I organized also had 2 microwave ovens and 2 sinks (you can use the same stovetop if you follow the proper procedures.)  (Learn more about keeping a Kosher kitchen here.)

Since the Meat, Dairy & Pareve cookware can't be stored in the same drawers, or washed in the same sink, it's truly like trying to fit 3 kitchens into one. 

This was not an easy task, but we made it work!  Zoning, Labeling and color coding are ESSENTIAL to organizing a Kosher kitchen. You have to simplify every task & routine and you really have to be brutal about letting go of things you don't use often.  While sorting, you need to be careful to keep meat with meat and so on. To make things easier, here a few things we did.

• Got white and black utensil holders and put dairy utensils in white on the counter next to the stove.  On the other side we put meat utensils in black.
• Labeled every cabinet and drawer.
• Created zones by putting all the meat things to the left of the stove as much as possible, including the meat Microwave, knives, cutting board, etc.  The meat sink was to the left as well.  Dairy was to the right as much as possible.  Pareve was in the center cabinets. 
• Created a lunch preparation zone with meat containers in one drawer and dairy containers in another.
• Anything not used at least weekly or monthly was put in an overflow storage cabinet in the basement or in the Dining room.  This includes all the Passover and Holiday items.  Shabbas though was giving special drawers and cabinets in the dining room.

I found some great ideas and resources online to help my clients maintain their newly organized Kosher kitchen and make it easy to keep everything separate easier.  The following sites carry items to organize a Kosher kitchen. Some use a color coded scheme; blue for dairy, green for pareve, and red for meat, which are very popular colors to use in Jewish homes. But you can't always find everything in the right colors, so labels are critical.  These sites have pre-made Kosher coded engraved signs for putting on cabinets and drawers, oven, dishwasher and microwave safe labels & coins you can attach to cookware & other items, color coded and labeled cutting boards, kitchen towels, oven mitts & more. 

http://www.milechai.com/jewishcooking/kosher1.html

http://www.happyhomepage.com/easykosher.shtml

http://www.nvo.com/1800dreidel/kosherkitchen/

http://www.jewish-life-organized.com/kosher-kitchen.html

More neat Jewish Living resources can be found on the Solutions For Busy Moms Blog

If you have any specific tips or good websites for organizing a Kosher kitchen, please be a mensch and leave me a comment below! 

Mazel Tov!  : )

Comments

[Jessica Duquette]

what a fabulous and resourceful post, Ariane! I helped someone with a kosher kitchen several years ago and yes, it was quite a challenge. It really made me respect the devotion and faith it takes to commit yourself to what you believe and live it on a daily basis. I wish I had the resources in this post back then!

All the best to you,

warmly,

Jessica

[Monica Ricci]

Wow Ariane, what a challenge! I have never yet been asked to organize a Kosher kitchen (which is amazing, considering I've been in business almost nine years), but now I think I could do it thanks to your very informative post. What about the fridge though? Can you store meat and dairy together in the same refrigerator?
~Monica

[Sarah Zeldman]

Monica - Yes, you can keep meat and dairy in the same fridge.

Thanks for the mention! Here's a direct link to my Jewish Solutions. http://www.solutionsforbusymoms.com/display/ShowJournal?moduleId=443136&categoryId=37233

And my the only resource for Jewish Organizing Information (that I know of, other than this post)

http://www.jewish-life-organized.com/

And look for great kosher meal solutions coming soon from:

http://www.downloadyourdinner.com