Kosher cheese in Canada...need some advice
I'm searching for kosher cheese and I was hoping to get some advice.
we've recently started to keep kosher and we're trying to eliminate old habits. those habits included eating cheese, both hard and soft.
i've had some luck finding some hechshered cheese at the grocery store, but i've also ventured into the organic food section and found what appears to be renet-free cheese.
obviously, hechsher would be prefered. but does anyone have any advice or experience when it comes to cheese that does not show renet on their ingredient list?
By atomeyes
on Nov 16, 2009 07:28 AM
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I personally only eat cheese with a hechsher, and can't give you advice as to specific non-hechshered cheeses that might meet your personal requirements. That said, not all rennet is animal-derived; most kosher cheeses are made with microbial rennet.
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I also only eat cheese with a hechsher, due to the complexity of the laws. Why don't you try getting in touch with COR? http://www.cor.ca/ They should be able to explain cheese kashrus requirements better than I can and tell you where to find stuff, as I believe they certify Canadian cheese products (this is off the top of my head, most kashrus org websites are blocked here at work... though not Chowhound, funnily enough).
Kosher Italia is also investigating the possibility of shipping cheese to Canada according to their website, try emailing them for more information.
Good luck on keeping kosher. Be sure to check back here for tips and recipes!
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This is the best list I know of: http://cheese.joyousliving.com/Cheese...
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To clarify, DeisCane's list is of vegetarian cheeses, not kosher-certified ones.
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why are the kosher brand chunk feta and Romano cheeses I.E. Haolam/ Migdal/ Millers not vegetarian as per Deiscane's list?
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A cheese can be kosher dairy even if it is made with animal rennet.
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really?
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Yup. To quote from an article by R. Avraham Gordimer, who is the lead mashgiach for cheeses in the US for the OU:
"Animal rennet and lipase can be kosher, however. If the kosher source animal is slaughtered, de-veined, salted and processed according to kosher law, its rennet and lipase are fine for kosher use. (There is no halachic problem with using animal-derived enzymes in cheese [mixing meat and milk] since the amounts used are miniscule. Moreover, the enzymes are not cooked with the milk, and they are flavorless. Also, the davar hama’amid principle cited earlier only applies to non-kosher substances, and the enzymes are actually kosher.)"
The full article is here: http://www.kashrut.com/articles/cheese/
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Yes, sorry for the confusion. It is a vegetarian rennet list. However, many of those are triangle-k or table-k. FWIW.
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Have you been to Kosher City? They have a pretty good selection of Kosher cheeses.
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