The deli case is where kosher gets specific: the beef needs shechita and salting, the casing can't be collagen off a pig, and even the spice blend has to be cleared. These three have been at it for decades — 1921, 1954, and 2010 — and each names the agency doing the watching.
Published July 2026 · Updated 7 Jul 2026
Started in Brooklyn in 2010 making glatt-kosher sausage that isn't the standard kosher lineup: sweet Italian, chorizo, andouille, alongside pastrami and corned beef. Their kosher certificate page names four agencies — the Orthodox Union, the New Square Kashrus Council, Kehilah Kashrus of Flatbush, and Canada's COR. No fillers, no by-products, no soy.
Why it's worth findingKosher chorizo and andouille essentially didn't exist before this. Getting those spice profiles without pork is a recipe problem somebody had to sit down and solve.
See it at Jack's Gourmet →Oscar Abeles and Leopold Heymann started in the Bronx in 1954; Seth Leavitt bought the company in 1997 and built a purpose-designed New Jersey plant in 2007 rather than let the old methods go. Glatt-kosher franks, salami, pastrami, and corned beef under Orthodox Union certification — the OU's own Behind the Union Symbol feature walks through the plant.
Why it's worth findingA natural-casing kosher frank with no fillers snaps when you bite it. The supermarket kosher dog is a softer, cheaper animal entirely.
See it at Abeles & Heymann →Elia and Bella Gabay started making the square, deep-fried potato knish in Brooklyn in 1921, and the fourth generation of the family runs it now out of a Long Island plant. Certified kosher under Kof-K. They ship in temperature-controlled packaging rather than frozen, and orders generally go out Mondays and Tuesdays.
Why it's worth findingThe square knish is a New York boardwalk food that never got national distribution. Outside the Northeast, mail order is genuinely the only way to eat one.
See it at Gabila's Knishes →This seat's open on purpose — we won't pad the list to hit a number. If you ship real kosher salami, hot dogs & knishes direct, it's earned, not sold.
Add your brand →Pork is out, and kosher beef and lamb can only use forequarter cuts in most US production because removing the sciatic nerve from the hindquarter is difficult work few plants do. That leaves beef as the practical base for nearly all kosher charcuterie. It's leaner and more assertive than pork salami, which is why the spicing runs heavier on garlic and pepper.
The round baked knish is the deli-counter version, thicker dough, softer. Gabila's square knish is a distinct Coney Island thing: thin dough wrapped around seasoned potato and deep fried, so the outside crisps and blisters. It's meant to be eaten out of hand with mustard, not plated.
Cured salami travels fine year-round. Fresh sausage, franks, and knishes go out with insulation and cold packs, and every one of these makers ships early in the week so nothing sits in a truck over a weekend. Order Monday through Wednesday and you avoid the problem entirely.
Yes. The usual culprits are corn syrup, dextrose, and spice carriers, all of which are fine year-round and problematic on Passover. Abeles & Heymann has run Passover-certified franks in past years, but it's a per-year, per-item thing — check the current label rather than assuming.
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