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If one were cooking a pot of pasta or a soup and later found a bug or many bugs in the pasta or soup, would the pot need to be re-kashered after it was thoroughly cleaned?

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No need to kasher once the bugs have been cleaned out, because the halachah is that bugs are נותן טעם לפגם, they impart an unpleasant taste [that does not enhance the flavor of other foods]. Source: Yoreh Deah siman 104.

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And the Gemara at the end of Gittin says that if you find a fly in your soup, the appropriate thing to do is pull out the fly and eat the soup. – Shalom Oct 7 '11 at 16:37
@shalom - but it's not necessarily referring to hot soup. And anyway, a fly would usually not be large enough to prohibit an entire bowl of soup. – Dave Oct 7 '11 at 16:39
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@msh210, if the berya is whole, you'll have a problem. Once you pull it out, all that remains is bug juice, which isn't a berya. Berya would only present problems if it's a thick, opaque stew in which you think you're likely to unwittingly eat a whole bug while eating the soup. – Shalom Oct 7 '11 at 17:19
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@Shalom The concept of berya brings up fond memories: judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/213/… (Note the link in the first comment on the question.) – Isaac Moses Oct 7 '11 at 18:01
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Isaac, we generally treat all bugs as ta'am lifgam. As one teacher of mine said, when you actually consider how many species of insect are theoretically edible, this may be a case of halacha giving us a nice break. – Shalom Oct 7 '11 at 18:43
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Your average bug is probably not much bigger than a half a centimeter. That means its volume is 0.125 cm^3. Assuming a bug is roughly the same density as water, a bug should weigh around 125mg. 60 times the weight of a bug would be roughly 7.5 grams. Most pots contain more food then that.

I did it in weight because it is easier to appreciate weight measurements, it would come to roughly the same result if one calculated in volume, a pot 60 times .125 cm^3 would be 7.5 cm^3. That is definitely smaller than your average pot.

In other words, there is a good chance that the bug would be batul in the pot.

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Isn't shishim by volume only, though? – msh210♦ Oct 10 '11 at 3:53
@msh210 yes. It's for presentation only (I see 7.5g more than 7.5 cm^3) – Shmuel Brin Oct 10 '11 at 4:09

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