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50 free Kosher Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Kosher food trivia starts with the words themselves: what kosher and treif mean, which books of the Torah the rules come from, and why nobody agrees on the reason for them. Then the animals: cloven hooves and cud, why the pig and the camel both fail, fins and scales, why sturgeon and catfish are out, the only kosher invertebrate, the turkey exception and the giraffe ruling of 2008. The quiz covers shechita and the shochet's knife, salting and the liver, Jacob's sciatic nerve, the missing hindquarters, and glatt lungs. The second half moves into the kitchen and the shop: the kid in its mother's milk, six hours between meat and dairy, fleishig and milchig dishes and when they were invented, pareve eggs and gelatin, hechsher symbols from a 6th-century menorah stamp to the Orthodox Union and the Big Five, mevushal wine and Concord grapes, four cups at the Seder, chametz, kitniyot and the candle-lit search, Sephardi glassware, kosher salt's TV career, Hebrew National's slogan, the $40 billion American market, female IDF supervisors and the one-in-sixty rule for GM salmon. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on kashrut, kosher foods, hechshers, shechita, kosher wine, kosher salt and Passover, with the supporting sentence attached to each question. Easy questions suit anyone curious; the expert tier reaches David Macht's lupin seedlings and the word dores.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the word 'kosher' literally mean?
Fit
It is the Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew kashér.
Q 02What is the Yiddish-derived word for food that is not kosher?
Treif
Pasul is the opposite of kosher for objects; treif originally meant 'torn'.
Q 03Which two books of the Torah supply most of the basic laws of kashrut?
Leviticus and Deuteronomy
The Torah does not give reasons for most of the rules; some scholars class them as chukim, laws with no rational explanation.
Q 04Which two features must a mammal have to be kosher?
Cloven hooves and chewing the cud
The camel, hyrax and hare fail on hooves; the pig fails on rumination.
Q 05Why specifically is the pig excluded as non-kosher?
It does not chew the cud
The camel, hyrax and hare are excluded for the opposite reason: they ruminate but lack split hooves.
Q 06What must a fish have to be kosher?
Fins and scales
That rules out all shellfish and any scaleless fish.
Q 07Why is sturgeon considered non-kosher, even though it is a finned fish?
Its scales are extremely hard to remove
Kosher fish need fins and easily detachable scales.
Q 08What is the only kosher invertebrate?
Certain locusts
Most communities lack a clear tradition about which locusts qualify, so few Jews eat them.
Q 09What is the ritual slaughterer who performs shechita called?
A shochet
He must be trained and certified, and doubles as inspector, shochet u'bodek.
Q 10What is the ultra-sharp knife used for kosher slaughter called by Ashkenazi Jews?
Chalaf
The shochet runs a fingernail along the blade before and after slaughter to check for the slightest nick.
Q 11What is described as the most basic eating rule in the Torah?
Blood is not to be consumed
Meat is soaked and salted to draw out blood; the blood-rich liver is grilled over an open flame instead.
Q 12Which organ, being very rich in blood, is grilled over an open flame rather than salted?
The liver
Roasted meat in general needs no prior salting because fire purges the blood.
Q 13Roughly how long is salted meat left to drain during kashering?
The time to walk one biblical mile, 18–24 minutes
Q 21According to historian David Kraemer, when did keeping separate sets of dishes for meat and milk develop?
The late 14th and 15th centuries
Earlier families may simply have waited overnight before reusing a pot for the other kind of food.
Q 22Which large African animal was ruled eligible to be kosher in 2008, though it is not slaughtered because it is too costly?
Giraffe
It has split hooves, chews the cud, and its milk curdles; restraining one for shechita is impractical.
Q 23Which bird is the sole exception to the rule that a bird needs an established tradition (masorah) before Jews may eat it?
Turkey
Coarse-grained kosher salt is used, then rinsed away before cooking.
Q 14Which biblical patriarch's injury is the reason the sciatic nerve is removed from kosher meat?
Jacob's
Genesis 32:32 records that his was damaged wrestling an angel; the removal process is called nikkur.
Q 15Why are kosher butchers often only able to sell cuts from the forequarters?
Forbidden fats and the sciatic nerve are hard to remove from the hindquarters
Nikkur experts strip out chelev fats, tendons and blood vessels before meat is sold.
Q 16Which biblical command is the source of the ban on mixing meat and dairy?
Do not cook a kid in its mother's milk
The Torah repeats it three times, and Jews may not benefit from such mixtures in any way, even by selling them.
Q 17According to the Shulchan Aruch, how long should one wait after eating meat before consuming dairy?
Six hours
Customs range from one to six hours; brushing the teeth in between is generally discouraged.
Q 18What are the Yiddish words for meat and dairy foods and utensils?
Fleishig and milchig
Observant homes keep two sets of dishes; historian Goitein noted the Cairo Geniza never mentions such a divided kitchen.
Q 19What is a food that is neither meat nor dairy called?
Pareve
Fish, grains and produce all qualify, and bread is generally kept this way so it can go with either.
Q 20Which food is classed as neutral, neither meat nor dairy, despite being an animal product?
Eggs
Fish and fish gelatin count the same way, as does gelatin from ritually slaughtered kosher animals.
Jews began eating it without a tradition because it shows all the kosher signs: an extra back toe, a crop and a peelable gizzard.
Q 24What word describes a bird that is not kosher because it is a predator?
Dores
The Torah lists 24 forbidden bird types, but which species they are is disputed.
Q 25What is a hechsher?
A kosher certification symbol or certificate
Muslims, dairy-allergic people and vegans also use these labels to check ingredients.
Q 26Which was the first independent kosher certification agency, founded in 1923?
The Orthodox Union (OU)
Certification expanded in the 1930s as brands like Coca-Cola sought it to widen their market.
Q 27The 'Big Five' US kosher agencies certify more than what share of kosher food sold in America?
80%
They are the OU, OK, Kof-K, Star-K and CRC.
Q 28What image did 6th-century Jews near Acre stamp on their dough to mark it kosher, according to a clay stamp found in 2011?
A menorah
An 11th-century Cairo Geniza certificate vouched for cheese made on the Mount of Olives.
Q 29What does 'glatt' mean in Yiddish?
Smooth
It refers to lungs free of adhesions; the Hebrew equivalent is halak.
Q 30Which organ is inspected for adhesions in every kosher-slaughtered mammal?
The lungs
Ashkenazi and Sephardi customs differ on how to treat lung adhesions in cattle.