Articles

By Rabbi Dovid Cohen, Administrative Rabbinic Coordinator

Q. What does it take to make a chicken kosher?

A. The Ashkenazic custom is to only eat breeds of poultry for which we have a mesorah that they are kosher.  [Sephardim are a bit more lenient about this.]  That means that although most chicken breeds are kosher, and we assume the common turkey is, as well, there are just a few breeds of ducks and geese for which there is a reliable mesorah.  Thus, Mallard, Pekin, and Runner ducks are kosher, as are White Embden and Grey Toulouse geese, but most do not accept Muscovy and Mulard ducks as kosher.

Once we have a kosher bird, there are 3 basic steps needed to make it kosher: [a] shechitah, [b] bedikah, and [c] melichah.  [a] Shechitah for chicken is different than shechitah for an animal, in that the chicken is held in the shochet’s hand (usually with help from a plant employee), while animals are typically held in place in a “pen”.  [b] Bedikah is the process of checking to see if an animal has some sort of defect that would render it a teraifah (and, therefore, not kosher), and the Rambam says that such defects were so uncommon in poultry that in his day it was unheard of for someone to check a bird in this manner.  Nowadays, that has changed, and just about every slaughterhouse has a protocol for checking for issues with the tzomes hagidin (ripped leg tendons), Meckel’s Diverticulum (part of the intestines), bukah d’atmah (dislocated hip), and some others.  [c] Some of the particular complications of melichah/salting a chicken are that internal organs must be removed beforehand, wing tips must be cut, the internal cavity must be salted, and the salted birds must be strategically arranged so blood doesn’t collect in that cavity.

The most common issue that raises consumer questions is when the narrow end of a chicken drumstick is red, and that redness appears to be blood.  In most cases, these do not present a kashrus concern, but if someone notices a “red leg” which seems much darker or redder than usual, they should ask their Rabbi to evaluate whether it is a concern.

Another issue that consumers might notice is whether there is a broken bone.  If the bone broke while the chicken was alive, there are many cases where that renders the chicken a teraifah, but (a) in most cases the breakage is due to handling in the slaughterhouse after shechitah, which does not pose a kashrus concern, and (b) most slaughterhouses have staff who specifically remove any chickens with problematic broken bones.  As above, if a broken bone looks particularly bloody or unusual, one should show it to their local Rabbi.

This article first appeared in the Let’s Talk Kashrus column, Yated Ne’eman, January 31, 2025.