Tel Aviv’s Bodega Burger is already known for pushing the envelope on kosher food, with a pioneering (beef) bacon (vegan) cheese burger as its signature dish since it opened in 2019.

Soon, it may add old-fashioned Southern fried chicken to its menu. The traditional recipe requires buttermilk, but with a new “non-cow” milk produced by Israeli company Remilk freshly on the market, Bodega restaurateur Feivel Oppenheim says his chefs are excited about new opportunities.

“At Bodega, people come in ready to experience something that they haven’t experienced before,” he told The Times of Israel over the phone. “The kosher market is thirsty for it.”

Labeled as “New Milk” (Hehalav Hehadash in Hebrew), the Remilk beverage contains proteins identical in structure to dairy proteins in cow-produced milk, but engineered in the company’s laboratories via a yeast-based fermentation process.

Since no cow or milk cells or particles were used, the product has received a parve kosher certification under the supervision of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel (Jewish dietary laws prohibit consuming meat and milk products together and even require separate dishes for them; parve food can be eaten with both).

The result is something that, according to the company, looks like milk, tastes like milk, and behaves like milk when frothed or used in cooking, unlike any previous plant-based milk alternative, opening up the potential for a revolution in the kosher culinary world.

Speaking with The Times of Israel, several kashrut experts explained that, unlike other lab-developed “no-animal” milk or meat products, there is no doubt that the milk is parve. Still, some kashrut precautions may be needed, as long as the New Milk is not generally recognizable to the public, especially to avoid incurring the rabbinic prohibition of marit ayin (“appearance to the eye”), or appearing to violate the law.

“This milk has the qualities of milk, but it is not really milk,” Rabbi Eliezer Simcha Weiss, a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council who sits on the rabbinate’s kashrut committee, told The Times of Israel in a message. “It is totally free from anything connected to cows. If the initial cell had been taken from a cow, there would be arguments.”

Rabbi Moshe Elefant, COO of OU Kosher, the world’s largest kosher certification agency, explained that the new beverage represents a further step in a world of milk........

© The Times of Israel