devarim

In an effort to reconnect with my Mizrachi (Persian) roots (you never could tell by looking at me, could you?), I decided that I wanted to make a slow-cooked chicken for Shabbat lunch this week, stuffed with dried fruit, surrounded by chickpeas, sweet potatoes and garlic, and resting on a bed of basmati rice. The chickpeas, sweet potatoes, and garlic cloves are probably less than authentic, but I wanted to get a little creative. The difficulty is that the only times we can have our slow-cooker turn on during the day Friday are around 9:00 AM and right before Shabbat. (I could theoretically set the timer to turn on around noon or something, but I do not feel comfortable leaving raw meat out at room temperature all morning.)

Now, generally speaking, food that you leave on/in a heat source from before Shabbat, to be eating during Shabbat, must be at least half-cooked (minimally edible) before Shabbat starts. The basic reasoning is that if it is not at least that far cooked, you may be tempted to stoke the coals (or mess with the temperature dials) on Shabbat in order to make the food ready for dinner. No matter how good the seal, a chicken roasting and steaming itself for upwards of twenty-seven hours is just not going to taste good at the end. However, I vaguely remembered a halacha about puttiing up raw food (specifically, meat) immediately before Shabbat if it was for lunch on Shabbat day rather than dinner that evening. I decided to ask our shul's rabbi (hereinafter "Rabbi G") about it after our Gemara (Talmud) class last night.

...which, coincidentally, is the third perek (chapter) of Masechet (Tractate) Shabbat, dealing in part with leaving food on/on/near an oven before Shabbat to continue cooking or stay warm.

I didn't expect us to get to this exact topic during class, but while learning a related passage from the Shulchan Aruch and the corresponding Mishnah Berurah, it came up. (I can't seem to find these passages online, but in the Shulchan Aruch it's siman resh-nun-gimmel (section 253), sif aleph (paragraph 1).) The relevant part states that it is permitted to place food before Shabbat to continue cooking on Shabbat if it contains a piece of raw meat (meaningi completely uncooked, not sort of cooked) that is wanted for Shabbat lunch, since there is no way it could possible be ready in time for dinner (so you won't want to stoke the coals to make it cook faster, since it would do no good) but it will surely be ready in time for lunch.

The catch is that the Mishana Berurah specifies that the food in question must be/contain raw meat, and that vegetables don't count because they cook too quickly...but it doesn't say a word about chicken. Since it came up anyway, I piped up with my question about my desired Shabbat lunch for this week. Rabbi G scowled for a moment, then leaned back and muttered, "No one's ever asked me about chicken before." Thus commenced a short but lively discussion about turkey and chicken being placed into cholent, followed by a discussion of exactly what I plan to make this week (it's not cholent!), followed in turn by requests for the recipe (uh....I'm making this up as I go along), and subsequently followed by an explanation of how long the slow-cooker recipe book says it should take to cook a whole chicken on the "low" setting. Rabbi G's interim solution for me was that I should buy a little meat and put a piece of raw meat into the pot along with everything else, and this would allow us to put the whole shebang up to cook right before Shabbat. Then he muttered again about chicken.

Hee! I stumped the rabbi! I mean, I hope I didn't embarrass him, becuase that completely wasn't my goal, but I'm still a little amazed in a never-thought-I-would-do-something-like-that sort of way.

I should add that Rabbi G emailed me around 10:30 last night to say that the chicken was fine on its own and the meat purchase was unnecessary. As always, don't rely on me for halachic guidance; always consult your local rabbi.

(Alisha, you should feel free to pipe up here with your questions so we can continue last night's discussion this topic. Anyone else go ahead and join in...N, I'm looking at you.)