Airbnb Survival Guide

So you booked a beautiful Airbnb… now what?

In this episode of Let’s Talk Kashrus, Rabbi Sholem Fishbane - Kashrus Administrator at the Chicago Rabbinical Council, and Executive Director of AKO, walks us through the practical halachic realities of using an Airbnb kitchen. From stovetops and ovens to microwaves, Keurigs, sinks, and even barbecues — what can you use, what needs kashering, and what should you avoid altogether?

Whether you're traveling for vacation, Yom Tov, or business, this Airbnb Survival Guide gives clear, practical guidance to help you stay kosher.

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R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Hello everyone and welcome back to Let's Talk Kashrus, presented by the Kashrus Awareness Project and the CRC of Chicago. Today I am privileged to be joined by Rabbi Sholem Fishbane, Kashrus Administrator at the CRC of Chicago, the Chicago Rabbinical Council. Thank you Rabbi Fishbane for joining us. Always a pleasure to see you.

Today we'd like to discuss a topic that comes up throughout the year when people travel, they go to Airbnb’s, and they come into this beautiful apartment or house, and they settle down for a few days or for a week, and they'd like to use many of the appliances or other amenities that there are in the Airbnb, but they don't know from a kashrus standpoint what they may use, what they can't use. Could you walk us through, give us some tips as to what people could do when they go to an Airbnb?

R’ Sholem Fishbane: Yes, that's a great question and we get that all the time. So I'll share with you what we've put together based on all the questions that come through. So the very first thing you should assume is that all the utensils and appliances and counters and sinks are not kosher.

And this is critical. Even if the guy says I only rent it to kosher people. That is way very common. Today we won't get into the halachic reasons why, but you need to assume that it's not kosher and sometimes the hotels like to do that, but you're coming in, it's not kosher.

So now what, right? So some people are smart and they think ahead of time, so they will bring their own pots. Their own pots and pans from home. And then the question only becomes can they use the stove top? So if you bring your own pots and pans from home, you can use the stove top as is, no problem. If it's an electric, a glass-covered rather, a glass-covered, that you would need to kasher.

How do you kasher that? You turn on each burner one or two at a time, not all four at the same time, for 15 minutes before placing the kosher pot onto the surface for the first time, and you're good to go.

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: And the reason you don't do all at the same time is because it could cause the glass to crack, right?

R’ Sholem Fishbane: Very good. Yeah, so it's a practical thing, it's not a halachic thing. Exactly.

And then you look at just as you said, going through the kitchen. Then you have the oven. So you can use the oven after kashering it. Now how do you kasher? Well, if you're lucky and you have what's called the self-clean cycle, that goes way up there, you do that and you're 100% that's the best, that's libun gamur.

You can kasher that way. Let's say it's the traditional that it doesn't only go higher than I don't know 550. So assuming that it's an eino ben yomo, and a person can assume it's an eino ben yomo, you can turn it on for 550 degrees, which is the highest, for one hour, and then you could use it. Obviously it has to be cleaned inside, but that would be as far as the oven goes.

Moving on, what about the microwave? So there's different shittos in microwave, I'm just sharing what we say at the CRC. There's really two ways. One way is you clean out all the visible residue that's in the microwave and then you double wrap the food on all sides. That is the somewhat the easiest.

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: If someone for some reason they say no I need to kasher the microwave, is there a way of kashering?

R’ Sholem Fishbane: So I'm not talking for Pesach now, the Pesach and all, let's just focus on as you said Airbnb during the year. You can kasher, yeah. Clean it very well, remove the glass plate which you cannot kasher, and then put a boiling cup of water into the chamber for about 10 minutes, 15 minutes until it fills up with steam and then you can kasher it that way and then you can use the microwave. So that would be in terms of the microwave.

Okay, so we did stove top, oven, microwave. Very common question, what about the coffee maker? Okay. So I think we've said it several times that coffee by itself is kosher, right? Plain old coffee doesn't need a hechsher even. And most places are just going to have plain old coffee.

And you can see, you can open up the cabinets, they usually leave over from the previous people, and you'll see plain old coffee, decaf, regular, it's fine. And you most of the time even see a hechsher on it. So that's not the problem. So the plain old coffee you could use, not a problem.

What you do need to worry about though is the cups, the K-cups, Keurig cups, well, so the K-cups is a little different, but let's just talk about where it's where it's the regular where it drips and you take it out. Oh okay. So that is a little bit because there's a dishwasher, you're going to assume they're going to wash it in the dishwasher. So you shouldn't use that and you certainly shouldn't use the ceramic cups.

That bring from home or figure out a way how to get into your cup that way. But the coffee maker... self is okay.

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: So if I could remove let's say that glass container and then put in my own cup and let it drip directly into it, that would be okay.

R’ Sholem Fishbane: 100 percent. And I could use the maker. That's not the problem. Yeah, that's not the problem.

The Keurig also. Keurig machines in general almost all of them are there used to be, I'm talking about 15 years ago or 10 years ago, they made a non-kosher Keurig cup. They made chicken soup or something. But they've discontinued that long gone, so there's almost never you're going to have something really non-kosher going in a Keurig machine.

So it's not a problem to use a Keurig machine. You use their cups, no problem. If someone is makpid on cholov stam keilim, sometimes you'll have a Keurig pod that might be a hot chocolate that's milchig. That you should look out for.

But if one is not makpid on keilim but keeps cholov yisroel but not on keilim, so then you're okay making a Keurig using the Keurig machine because again almost all the ones that I've seen on Keurigs and these pods, they're either going to be kosher or kosher dairy across the board. Okay. Obviously we said before the dishwasher you cannot use. Toaster also we don't recommend using, also because people use it for non-kosher.

Now what about the you open these drawers, there's all sorts of utensils, right? You could have a can opener, corkscrew, a cup, a dish, a silverware, a sinktop, water pitchers. What about all those? There's a slew of those. So if you're going to use them for hot, you should not use it for hot for blios of treif. But for cold, assuming that they're clean, let's say you want to take a drink using a cup, a cold drink, that's okay.

If you want to use the can opener or the corkscrew or something like that, that's okay. Obviously you want to make sure that it's clean. When I say clean, sometimes it gets trapped in the crevices. There's residue that gets trapped in the cracks.

You make sure it's clean, but halachically it's okay to use that, and that really, that really helps people when they go to the Airbnb. And finally, just walking through the kitchen, the only thing that comes to mind that one should avoid is also the oven mitts. Okay. We advise against using the oven mitts, the placemats, and the colander also, just based on watching what goes on and all that.

So that's pretty much what happens in an Airbnb kitchen, and there's lots of ways to make it work. One of the things, just that you know kind of a nice little thing I learned from my brother Bentzy, he taught us a nice trick when we go out to these places, and people worry about barbecue. So what we do is we buy ourselves a grate, just like kind of like an oven grate, tovel it, and that's one of the things that slips into your the front flap of your suitcase all the time. And once you have that, you go to a Walmart, you buy yourself a nice big throwaway turkey roaster, aluminum pan that's sturdy, and then you go buy yourself a thing of charcoal and you light it and you can make your own barbecue wherever you want, and all you really needed to worry about was that one grate.

Afterwards you clean it and you put it back in your suitcase and you're good to go. So that's something that... R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: And you've seen this work?

R’ Sholem Fishbane: I've seen it work, we do it all the time whenever we get together, and it's just a nice little tip. Not a kashrus necessarily, but just once we're talking about...

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Listen, here at Kashrus Awareness, we give practical tips, we give kashrus tips, we give everything. I wanted to ask you one thing about sinks also in Airbnbs. I don't know if you touched on that. Putting keilim into sinks, turning on the hot water in the sink and things of that sort, if you could give some guidance.

R’ Sholem Fishbane: So basically what you want to be careful is that when you do wash the keilim, that you wash it at lukewarm. And that's something that therefore you want to give only an adult to be in charge of washing the sink so that there's no blios from the sink. That's a good point also, yes. So keep it soapy and lukewarm and you're good to go.

Got it. And a practical thing is maybe don't wear gloves because then you don't realize how hot... Right, right, right.

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Great point.

Anyway, it's been a great short summary here, helping us get through our Airbnb experience. As always, Rabbi Fishbane, thank you for joining us.