Question:
Dear Rabbi, many months ago I started to cook two separate meals. One meal was milk, and at a different time, one was fleishig. Both times it must have been Eruv Shabbos or Yom tov because I was stressed out and rushing, but I either put hot milchig into the cold, fleishig pot or cold milchig into a hot fleishig pot. On another occasion I did the same error with meat into our milchig pot. Both times I threw out the contents and segregated the pots, never to be used for cooking for months. I have not cooked in the pots and this has been for months. The pots have since been used only for hand washing small laundry items such as tzitzit, dish towels, small linens, masks for covid-19 with bleach and detergent. Everything has been scrubbed and bleached many, many times. How can we return them to their former uses of one for milk and one for meat? I know which one was the milchig one and which one was the fleishig one.
This Erev Shabbos I used one of the pots as a charcoal chimney to fire up my coals so I could barbeque for Shabbos. The pot was full of flame on the inside but not on the outside. I still have coals left. Could I use coals to burn the issur out of the pots? How could I do this?
Thank you Rabbi!
Answer:
The pot that was used as a charcoal chimney, and had burning coal inside it, is koshered, and can now be used. What you did was called libun, and it burns out any absorbed taste that might have been in the pot. You didn’t have to go so far in order to kasher it. You can also do regular hagalah on the pot. Make sure the pot is clean, fill it till the top with water and bring the water to a rolling boil. Then place something hot inside the pot, in order that the boiling water will flow over the top ridge of the pot, while the water is still boiling. Then spill out the water and rinse it in cold water, and it is good to go. Alternatively, you can heat up a larger pot of water, bring it to a boil, then place your pot inside it, keep it there for a few second, remove, and rinse.
Best wishes
Sources:
O:CH 451-4.
