What's the Deal with a Kosher Dill Pickle?

[SGOS]

I don't think I knew what kosher meant until late in my teens.  I would have thought it was a specific type of pickle with a distinctive taste and nothing more.  They sell scads of those things in any grocery store and by any brand name, but you never see kosher hamburger dills or cucumber dills.  I never see any kind of kosher product other than pickles in the stores I shop in.

I used to think kosher meant being blessed by a rabbi?  But from Wikipedia it's more like a quality control thing that makes sure the food is not unclean by Jewish standards.  It doesn't actually say a rabbi must be present.  Although kosher meat must be slaughtered by a process of ritual, the rest of the stuff just needs to be clean enough to meet standards proscribed by Jewish law.   But why the big deal with pickles?

[Farroc]

=D> It's about time somebody pointed this out. =D>

[LikelyToBreak]

I read somewhere, it is just a scam to get money.  Some Jewish organization gets a kickback by letting processors say something is kosher.  Frankly, I don't find their way of slaughtering an animal any more humane then most which are used by non-kosher processors.  In fact, it may be more inhumane to slaughter an animal the kosher way.  But, that is just a matter of opinion, I guess.

[PickelledEggs]

I used to work in a liquor store and a hasidic jew came in and asked me for a beer I reccomended. I told him to get this microbrewed beer that is basically an amber ale made with honey.

It's REALLY good.... but anyway...

He said as long as it is one ingredient, it is automatically kosher. So for beer, if it is just made with hops the normal way, it's kosher, but if you add honey, it has to be blessed by a rabbi...

[SGOS]

=D> It's about time somebody pointed this out. =D>

LOL Yeah, I thought it was rather important.

[Shiranu]

He said as long as it is one ingredient, it is automatically kosher. So for beer, if it is just made with hops the normal way, it's kosher, but if you add honey, it has to be blessed by a rabbi...

I think I found my calling... to be a beer-blessing rabbi!

[Aleps]

He said as long as it is one ingredient, it is automatically kosher. So for beer, if it is just made with hops the normal way, it's kosher, but if you add honey, it has to be blessed by a rabbi...

I think I found my calling... to be a beer-blessing rabbi!

I wonder if I can be a professional rabbi to bless yummy things like popcorn and cake.

[Solitary]

Amber Ale with honey is terrific!  =P~  Solitary

[the_antithesis]

Kosher dill (US)

A "kosher" dill pickle is not necessarily kosher in the sense that it has been prepared in accordance with Jewish dietary law. Rather, it is a pickle made in the traditional manner of Jewish New York City pickle makers, with generous addition of garlic and dill to a natural salt brine

[youtube:y8bpwm6g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsvDSmMCKpA[/youtube:y8bpwm6g]

[SGOS]

Kosher dill (US)

A "kosher" dill pickle is not necessarily kosher in the sense that it has been prepared in accordance with Jewish dietary law. Rather, it is a pickle made in the traditional manner of Jewish New York City pickle makers, with generous addition of garlic and dill to a natural salt brine

I suspected as much.

[Atheon]

Yeah, when I was a kid I thought Kosher was a style of pickle.

[stromboli]

I declare this whole thread as Kosher.  :-D

[Shiranu]

Kosher dill (US)

A "kosher" dill pickle is not necessarily kosher in the sense that it has been prepared in accordance with Jewish dietary law. Rather, it is a pickle made in the traditional manner of Jewish New York City pickle makers, with generous addition of garlic and dill to a natural salt brine

I suspected as much.

So.. it's an amazing pickle.

[SGOS]

A ham sandwich with anything other than a kosher pickle is a waste of time and money.

[Colanth]

"Kosher" in the pickle industry means "garlic".  A dill pickle has no garlic in the spice mix, a kosher dill has.  There's a difference between a "kosher dill" pickle and a kosher dill pickle that's certified kosher (the label will have the certifying mark //http://kosherfood.about.com/od/guidetokosherfoodlabels/ss/symbols.htm).

As far as beer goes, it's the same thing.  As long as the honey is 'kosher' (it's just the stuff from the honeycomb with nothing added to it), adding it to beer doesn't require that the beer be separately certified.  (Beer isn't just hops, it's hops, barley, water and yeast - at the very least.)  Certifying that beer is kosher is like certifying that water is wet.  It's a vegetable product, and vegetables are kosher by definition.  (Honey could, by a real stretch, be considered an animal product, but since there's only 1, it's kosher by definition.  Meat, in and of itself, can't be non-kosher.  And since one wouldn't be eating the actual bees, and honey has no 'back end', ritual slaughter and 'which cut' wouldn't enter the equation.)

All that said, there are companies that get products that don't need certification certified - like bottled water.  Kosher certification doesn't test for bacteria or other contamination, and you can't drop water on the floor, then shovel it up and put it back into the bottle.  So what are they certifying?  That the bottle screw threads aren't lubed with lard?

And every spring, in Jewish areas, you can find lipstick certified kosher for passover.  (That means that no leavening is used in the preparation, as if there were such a thing as leavened wax.)  And milk certified kosher for passover.  Nonsense like that IS just to take money out of the pockets of idiots.  (When I was a kid, and milk came in waxed cardboard containers, there was a circular indent in the lid.  The company would put a cardboard circle into that indent with advertising.  I actually saw delivery men go into the stores with bags of "kosher for passover" circles and replace the circles in the containers that were already in the refrigerators.  I guess it was the words on the cardboard that changed the milk in the containers.  And Catholics think that they're the only ones who believe in transubstantiation.)