Chullin 113 – Salting

Shmuel explained the salting process. To extract blood from the meat, one needs to salt it very well and then rinse it very well. That means covering it with thick salt and leaving it in a vessel for eighteen minutes, but preferably for an hour. Rinsing is needed to remove the salt, the blood, and then another rinsing removes the previous dirty waters. Furthermore, meat being salted should always be in a perforated vessel, so that the blood is not re-absorbed into it. Rav Sheshet would salt each piece of meat individually, but that's too much. For if one suspects that blood from one piece will get absorbed into the other, then he must equally suspect that blood from one side of one piece with get absorbed into the other side.

Only meat of a kosher animal with the milk of a kosher animal are forbidden. Rabbi Akiva says that the Torah did not prohibit cooking meat of a wild kosher animal or the meat of a fowl with milk, although he agrees that the Sages later prohibited this as well: the Torah repeated the prohibition thrice to exclude from it the meat of wild animals, non-kosher animals, and fowl.

Art: Ferdinand Loyen Du Puigaudeau - Landscape with Mill near the Salt Ponds