the family is at the shabbos meal, and the pot of stew or meat is sitting on the hot plate or covered stove. it gets lifted off to serve a portion, and the rest needs to go back on the heat because people at the table will probably want seconds.
the ohr yitzchak (siman 73) explains that chazara is forbidden not because anything will actually cook. the food is fully cooked, there is no bishul achar bishul, and on a covered stove there are no coals to stoke. the reason is mechzi k’mevashel, it looks like cooking, the ran and the rashba on shabbos 38b, brought by the mishna berura on siman 253. the shulchan aruch (oc 253:2) gives the working conditions: the kira is gerufa uktuma, the food is still boiling, the pot stayed in his hand, it was not put down on the ground, and he meant to return it from the start.
1. when the pot is taken off just to serve and the plan from the start is to put it right back, what exactly are the conditions? does he have to keep holding it the whole time, or is setting it on the counter for a moment already a problem? does the food have to still be hot, and how hot?
2. if the whole reason is how it looks and not real cooking, does it matter where it goes back, a hot plate or covered stove versus an open flame? and does it matter how long it sat off the heat?
3. and if the pot never leaves the heat at all, it stays on the hot plate for the whole meal and only the ladle goes back and forth, is that plainly fine, or does serving straight from the fire have its own issue?
bottom line: with a normal hot plate or covered stove today, what are the working rules for serving from the pot at the meal and putting the rest back on the heat?
Thank you Rabbi, thank you very much.
Yes. The basic rule is pretty simple.
If you take a fully cooked pot off the fire or off the blech in order to serve from it, and you intend from the beginning to put it back, you can return it to the blech as long as you are still holding the pot and the food is still piping hot. That is the normal case of chazarah. See Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 253:2.
The reason for the restriction is not that the food suddenly becomes uncooked. It is already fully cooked. The issue is מחזי כמבשל, that putting a pot back onto a cooking surface can look like a new act of cooking.
That is why I would put it back only onto a blech or another covered cooking surface, not directly onto an open flame.
If you put the pot down and walk away from it, then you have broken that continuation. You are no longer simply returning the pot you were holding. At that point, putting it back onto the cooking surface looks much more like a new placement for cooking.
So practically, if you want to serve from the pot and return it, keep holding it, serve what you need, and put it back onto the blech while it is still very hot.
But there is an even simpler solution.
You do not have to take the pot off the fire at all.
If the cholent or stew is sitting on the blech or hot plate, you can simply take a ladle and serve directly from the pot while it remains there.
There is no problem with that.
Some people have developed a practice that you have to remove the pot from the heat before taking food out of it. I do not see the reason for that. You are not stirring the food in order to make it cook better. You are simply removing food that is already cooked so that you can eat it.
Taking cholent out with a ladle directly from the pot while it remains on the blech is perfectly fine.
So the easiest working rule is:
If you leave the pot on the blech, serve directly from it.
If you remove the pot to serve, keep holding it, keep in mind that you are returning it, make sure it remains very hot, and return it only to the blech or covered cooking surface.
Once you put it down and treat it as having been removed from the heat, putting it back becomes a new placement and raises the problem of מחזי כמבשל.