Soy Milk with ease
From the Money Saving Tips Dept.: So you don’t waste an entire half-gallon carton of soy milk when your favorite pareve recipe calls for half-a-cup of it, buy convenient juice-box-size 3-packs. Our local Shaw’s has several appropriately-sized products in its earthy-crunchy organic section. Eden Soy may be the only pareve brand in this size, so watch out — “Dairy Equipment” products (like Silk) may not be eaten or cooked with meat products, though they may be eaten immediately after meat meals.
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Go to whole foods for the widest selection of alternative non-dairy milks, including several that are pareve. Soy, rice, almond, even hazelnut milk. I go every few weeks to buy some cases of rice milk for our soy/dairy allergic toddler.
Jabbett: You’re likely wrong about the dairy equipment angle. Usually, dairy equipment is a distinction used to indicate that the equipment was previously used for dairy products and is therefore <i>treif</i> for those who hold by Cholov Yisroel. For those who don’t, the cleaning process is sufficient to make the production line pareve.
I got the info from Rabbi Yaakov Luban’s article regarding the Orthodox Union’s "dairy" designation — http://www.ou.org/kosher/da... — but I’d never assume that there aren’t divergent customs regarding any aspect of kashrut. OK Kosher, for example, discusses how it assigns "DE" — http://www.okkosher.com/Con... — but doesn’t go so far as to say what the halakhic ramifications are. (Other articles on their site seem to touch on the Cholov Yisroel issue you mention.) So, in the end, it depends on where your personal mara d’atra stands.
This is almost a moot point, as the OU is replacing all "DE" labels with "D." Apparently they don’t think we can handle the subtleties of halakha.
The OU has not, at least within the past 15 years, labeled any product "Dairy Equipment". The product is halachically dairy, not pareve, though it is a special category of dairy which can be treated like pareve in many ways. There is no halachic category of "dairy equipment". Products are either milchig, fleishig or pareve. Be that as it may, we find "dairy equipment" to be a helpful, even if nonhalachic, category.As to Steven Weiss’s statement that noncholov yisroel is considered treif by users of cholov yisroel, this is false. The only group which I can recall which has made such an issue is Lubavitch, not the vast number of other cholov yisroel users. Even Lubavitch rabbis find themselves giving hechsherim to non-cholov yisroel products in many cases, and with no qualms whatsoever. It is their custom to consider cholov hacompanies to be treif, but halachically it is not, and when push comes to shove, they recognize that fact. The OK supervises numerous milchig, noncholov yisroel products. Local hashgachos, often operated by Lubavitchers, often supervise noncholov yisroel products. I need only think back to several years ago, when no local (to us) Lubavitch rabbis would say that cholov hacompanies was ever anything but treif, whereas now, they often give out coupons for the Krispy Kremes that they supervise (grin).
As with many items, there are complexities relating to dairy equipment. Based on my understanding of the issue, it is not correct to state that this is not a halachik catagory. To the extent that the term is meaningful, it clearly is a halachik catagory. It basically is "balua" from a "nosen ta’am". That means it has absorbed from an item in which previous exposure to dairy items has caused taste to be absorbed. This does not make the item dairy, but there is concern that if cooked directly with meat, this is enough absorbed to be a problem. Where one decides to draw the line, based on different opionions of the later poskim, defines how one views DE. In a world where the desire is for a black & white with no gray, more of the major supervision organizations are avoiding the issue and just labeling it as dairy. I think that is unfortunate, but it is the reality of today.
another way to make pareve milk in the amount that you want, is very easy.
If you need for instance, one cup of milk, then you take one cup of water, and you put in either Oats, Almonds, Cashews or sunflower seeds…soak it for a while, and then blend till smooth. Voila, you have delicious, chemical free,inexpensive pareve milk.
Do you strain it first?