Halacha Date: 27 Tishrei 5774 October 1 2013
The Torah (Vayikra 17) states: “Any man from the Jewish nation or from the converts who dwell among them who eats any blood, I shall direct my face towards the soul who eats blood and I shall sever that soul from the midst of its nation.” The Torah states explicitly in several places that the prohibition to consume blood applies to the blood of both domesticated and non-domesticated animals as well as fowl. The Torah, however, does not prohibit consumption of the blood of kosher fish and grasshoppers. Nevertheless, our Sages required that when eating the blood of fish or grasshoppers, one must place some scales or a grasshopper inside so that it does not appear as though one were consuming forbidden blood.
The Laws of Salting
Due to the prohibition of consuming blood, we are required to salt meat before cooking it, for the nature of salt is to draw out the blood from the meat it is within. Nowadays, in most cities in Israel as well as many other Torah-observant communities around the world, most cuts of meat are sold after already having been soaked and salted in accordance with Halacha. Nevertheless, there are cuts of meat and various organs which are sold without having been salted yet for various reasons, such as liver, which cannot be koshered at all by means of salting or heart, whose method of koshering is somewhat complex. These parts of the animal are thus usually sold without having been salted already.
There are also several places where all the (kosher) meat sold is not koshered at all. This is especially true with regards to very expensive cuts of meat. Since the laws of salting are not so practical for people in places where meat is sold after already being soaked and salted, we shall only discuss some of the primary laws of salting meat pertinent nowadays (primarily the laws of salting liver which we shall, G-d-willing, discuss in the following Halacha).
The Gemara (Chullin 113a) states: “Shmuel said: Meat cannot be rid of its blood until one washes it off, salts it well, and then washes it again.” One must be extremely careful to wash off all of the blood on the meat’s surface, both before and after the salting. Before salting meat, one must soak the meat in water in a large vessel in order for the meat to soften; nevertheless, if the meat was not soaked for some time or if there if there was not sufficient time to do so, a thorough washing of the meat is sufficient.
After the piece of meat is washed, it should not be cut anymore before being salted, for cutting the meat cause blood to be released onto the surface of the meat in the place it was cut which will require the meat to be washed once again.
Liver sold in butcher shops is sold before it has been koshered and we shall therefore discuss the laws of koshering liver in the following Halacha.
