Sous-vide Bath: A Shabbos Path?

Part 2 of the sous-vide, can it be used on shabbos or yomtov? Rabbi Dovid Cohen - Administrative Rabbinical Coordinator at the cRc, fills us in on potential shabbos issues with using a sous-vide.

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R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Welcome to Let's talk Kashrus, presented by the Chicago Rabbinical Council. Today I am joined by Rabbi Dovid Cohen, administrative Rabbinic coordinator at the Chicago Rabbinical Council. Rabbi Cohen, how are you?

R’ Dovid Cohen: I am good, thank you.

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: So we previously spoke about the Sous-vide device or machine, and you gave a fascinating overview of what this device is.

Today I'd like to hear from you about the halachic ramifications of the Sous-vide in relation to Hilchos Shabbos about leaving food in a Sous-vide on Shabbos. Let's talk about that.

R’ Dovid Cohen: Okay, so before we start, I have to say this. It's obvious that you can't put food in on Shabbos.

Okay, you're not allowed to cook on Shabbos, so it's obviously you can't put like as you said, the question is, can I put in food before Shabbos? Okay, so there's two potential issues that we could think about. The first is called Shehiya. Shehiya means is the Chachomim said you're not allowed to put food in to cook before Shabbos into a into a fire or wherever it is because they were concerned that if you do that, you might end up wanting the food to cook a little faster and you'll adjust the flames to make the food cook a little faster. So they said you can't put food in, so which of course is what we're doing, we're putting food in to cook.

Now there are several exceptions to when you are allowed to. We all do that. We put in food, we have food that's hot for Shabbos. So there's some exceptions to that rule, and let's think about those different exceptions and whether they apply.

Okay, three main exceptions. One is if something called if you have put in raw food. If you put in food that will for sure not be ready to eat on Friday night, there's no question it won't be ready, and it for sure will be ready on Shabbos morning, then the Shehiya doesn't apply. And it's logical because why would I adjust the flame? It won't be ready tonight anyhow, it will for sure be ready tomorrow.

I have nothing to gain by adjusting the flame. So in some cases of Sous-vide, that's that's appropriate because if I have a food that takes twenty-four hours to cook, there's no way I can make it higher, it's not going to cook any faster in time for tonight, but by tomorrow it'll for sure be ready. That would be okay. But most Sous-vide is not like that.

Most of it takes just a couple of hours and if I were to adjust the flame I could get it ready faster and it could be ready for tonight, so that won't help us. Okay, the other one which people are very familiar with is that if you have a blech, okay it's called grufa u-ketuma. You can leave food on the fire if you have a blech because the blech is a reminder don't adjust the flame. That's it's a reminder they don't touch this flame, you're not supposed to do that on Shabbos, so don't adjust it.

Okay, that would be great, except how you going to make a blech on here? What are you going to do? Where are you going to put the blech? Where are you how you going to cover the fire? It doesn't there's no setup that could allow you to how would I cover this fire? The fire is in this rod, in this circulator. How how am I going to it's not realistically there's no way to do that. Okay, but what I can do is but the third answer the third solution will potentially help people. And that is if the food is cooked enough, I'll tell you what enough means in a second, if it's cooked enough then you're allowed to do that because the Chachomim said you know what, it's so it's cooked so well you don't have any need really to adjust it to make it a little better cooked than that you won't forget to do that on Shabbos.

Okay, so the Rama says what we follow he says the minhag is to follow the opinion that says is it's enough if it's ke-ma'achal ben drosai. If it's passably edible, that's good enough to allow you to leave it on from before Shabbos. Ke-ma'achal ben drosai the Mishna Berura says we should do means half cooked. Well what do what does it mean half cooked? Excuse me for that we go to the Chazon Ish.

Chazon Ish says when you want to decide something is how cooked it is, is it half cooked, look at the cook time. How long does it take to cook this food? After half that amount of time it's half cooked. Well in a regular piece of chicken I'm not sure how you do that, but in Sous-vide it's really easy because you put in the program how long you want it to cook for. You say cook this for four hours, okay you tell the machine cook it at this temperature for this many hours.

So you just have to make sure you did it half before Shabbos. If your program is three hours then it's got to be hot already an hour and a half before Shabbos and then it'll have been half cooked, in which case you avoid the problem of Shehiya. The food is passably edible and therefore you there's no concern of Shehiya as long as you get it passably edible in this case means is half the time of the cook time. Okay so as I as we spoke about last time the Sous-vide machine you tell it the temperature you want it and once it hits that temperature it starts counting down.

So as long as you hit that temperature and start the countdown half of the way before Shabbos then you're good. So let's say three hours you have to hit the temperature hour and a half before Shabbos and then it will be good enough. Got it. So that's as far as Shehiya.

That's for the Shehiya part. Shehiya means we're not allowed to leave food in that's one problem. Okay, that's the that's one issue to deal with. The second issue is called Hatmanah.

Hatmanah is that we're not allowed to take food even before Shabbos and wrap it up in a way that it'll get hotter because it's wrapped up. So like the classic case for us is if I have a hot water kettle a hot water urn and I don't I want it to be even hotter than it usually is, so I wrap it up with towels or some kind of, something around it. So I'm wrapping it up, I'm insulating it, and it gets hotter because there's a heating coil in it. That's called Hatmanah, in a way that makes it hotter, you're not allowed to do that from before Shabbos.

Okay, if you wrap it up all the way. So you say, okay, what does it have to do with this? Where's that, where's the Hatmanah, where's the towels? I'm not doing any towels or something around, I'm not wrapping it up in anything. So here we come to a Taz, and the Taz says that if you put something, submerge something in water, that is Hatmanah. The water is the insulator, the water is insulating the food that's in there.

Okay, it doesn't, when you think about it at first it doesn't seem like that, right? You think, you're thinking Hatmanah is like I put a blanket around it, that's Hatmanah. But he says no, Hatmanah is also, the water could be the Hatmanah also. Okay, so is that what's going on here? Remember, our meat is sitting there soaked in a pouch on the bottom in the water, so it's being, it's in the water. So is that Hatmanah? Now if that's Hatmanah, we're finished.

We won't be able to use this on Shabbos. Okay, because Hatmanah, it doesn't help what we said beforehand about being mainly cooked and this and that, none of that's going to help us. So this question I didn't see people talking about it specifically, like written Tshuvos about specifically about Hatmanah for Sous Vide, but they talk about a very similar case. Okay, and let's see how it compares.

And that is people want to put Kishka into their Cholent, and the Kishka is wrapped in foil. Right. So the question is, is it Hatmanah? Because the Kishka is being heated by the Cholent that's all around it. So before Shabbos I want to put it in.

So I put the piece of Kishka into the Cholent and is it considered Hatmanah to put that in? So most people, most Poskim held that that was Mutar. But if we think about why they held it's Mutar we'll see it's not so clear that it's going to apply to Sous Vide also. Okay. One, some Poskim say the reason why it's Mutar is because the taste travels back and forth between the Cholent and the Kishka.

It's just in a foil that you put into the Cholent for a reason, because you want it to get the taste of it. So it passes back and forth. Okay. And that's why it's Mutar, it's really part of the Cholent.

Well, that doesn't work for Sous Vide because the, it's in a sealed pouch. There's no taste transferring back and forth between the meat and the water. No, that's not going to work. Okay.

Other people said is well, it's Mutar because the foil that's around the, this is a very popular, people have said this. The foil around the Kishka is just there to hold it together, give it shape. You don't want it to disintegrate into the Cholent. So it doesn't count.

Just ignore it. Pretend that there's no foil. Let's say there would be no foil, what would you say? Not Hatmanah, it's just cooking, it's just part of the Cholent. You don't say the potatoes are having Hatmanah, it's silly, it's just part of the Cholent.

So it's just another piece of the Cholent over here. They said so the foil doesn't count. So they say here also the bag, the pouch is not for any special reason, the pouch is just to keep the water out. So what's the difference, the pouch keeps the water out and the foil keeps the Cholent out, it's the same idea.

Same idea. But it's not really, I don't think that that's an accurate description because what does it mean? So the foil we won't count the foil. What's the end of the sentence? The foil doesn't count and therefore it's part of the Cholent. Right? That's the end of the sentence.

The foil doesn't count so it's just part of the Cholent. Over here what? The bag doesn't count so it's part of the water? No. What do you mean it's part of the, the water's not cooking, the water is just the way you heat it up. The water is not, no one would dream that this meat is part of the water.

No, even if you ignore the pouch, you can't say the meat is part of the water. That doesn't make, that doesn't work like that. But what we do have is there's a Tshuvah in Minchas Yitzchak about this question about the Kishka in the Cholent and he brings there from Dayan Westheim wrote to him, I'll tell you why I think it's Mutar and at the end of the Tshuvah Dayan Westheim says I think that you're right about what you said. And he said is, we're looking at this wrong.

Hatmanah means is don't do something that is insulating a food. But when we think about the Dinim of Hatmanah there are several examples where we look at what the person had in mind. What were you trying to do when you did this? And I'll give you an example. The Din is you're allowed to take food and wrap it in foil and put it on top of a pot of food on Shabbos.

Why isn't that Hatmanah? It's wrapped in the foil, the foil is this insulator. The answer is no, because the person put it on top of there, why'd he wrap it in foil? He wrapped it in foil to keep bugs out. He wrapped it in foil so they shouldn't get dirty. That's why he did it.

He's not trying to do Hatmanah. So we creep into your mind and we say why are you doing this? You did this because you were trying, you weren't trying to do Hatmanah, you weren't trying to insulate it and make it hotter, no, you had some other purpose in mind. So over here he says we see that we can creep into your mind and decide is this Hatmanah or not. So Dayan Westheim said was, he said is why is the person putting it in here? He's trying to cook.

He's not trying to do Hatmanah. Hatmanah is I warm it up, I keep it warm. That's not what I'm doing, I'm trying to cook food. That's obviously what the person is trying to do.

adding heat to it. No, he's cooking it. Cooking is not hatmanah.

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Okay, so that's what Dayan Weiss said, and Dayan Weiss liked that chiluk,

R’ Dovid Cohen: yes.

In which case there would not be a concern of hatmanah. He's saying is you not have to be fancy and think we don't care about the foil, whether it's a taste traveler, he just says what the person's doing is obviously cooking. He's not he's not insulating, he's not warming, he's not getting heat into this thing. No, he's cooking it.

It's obvious that's what he's doing. So he says that would be a reason to muttar, in which case, if you follow that opinion, then it's then it'll be perfect, there's no hatmanah issues. Just the just the shehiyah part of it which we said before. Okay.

R’ Yitzchok Hisiger: Thank you so much.

R’ Dovid Cohen: Sure. Great to be here.