Soap Making-6 mixing up the soap
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Homesteader’s Tallow Soap


Looking for a natural, handmade tallow soap recipe? Look no further! This simple cold-process (lye) recipe uses basic ingredients and makes a nice hard bar of soap with the perfect creamy lather you want in a cleansing soap!

Once upon a time (last year) I was afraid to make soap.

Don’t laugh! Surely, I’m not the only one. My fear was based on whether my children would have an accident at some point in the process. Proving, yet again, how little faith I have in the listening skills I’ve imparted to them over the last decade and a half, give or take.

White Tallow Soap

I finally recognized my irrationality, bit the bullet, read a cheap e-book that gave me enough confidence to learn, and cringing with that first push of a button on my stick blender, became a soap maker.

How To Make Tallow Soap {The Homesteader's Soap}
Materials to be used on How To Make Tallow Soap

And I am hooked! Excited to have a new homesteading skill under my belt, I’ve had such fun playing with soap-making and experimenting with different recipes.

I knew what I wanted was to make my own tallow soap, which I had decided was the ultimate homesteader’s soap. Not only does tallow have some amazing benefits for our skin, but it also is a product I produce right here on our homestead. Converting the recipe into a milk soap using our wonderful Jersey milk would make it even better!

Melting the hard fats, tallow & coconut oil
Melting the hard fats, tallow & coconut oil

We already talked about all the benefits of tallow to your skin. It really is amazing, isn’t it?

But in and of itself, tallow is not very cleansing.

Using such a hard fat like tallow indeed makes it a little trickier to work with than many soap recipes. You need to purify it. When the fats begin to cool, they cool quickly and start to harden up. (This happens even faster when using milk instead of water in the recipe.) I learned that using an instant read-out thermometer to help me keep an eye on it and starting to stir the water/lye mixture in with the liquid fats before it cools all the way- like at about 110 degrees instead of 90-100 gives me a greater window of opportunity to saponify the mixture and get it into a mold.

Making Tallow Soap in the kitchen

I’m going to assume that you either already know how to make soap. All the particulars of the subject are beyond the scope of this post. When I said the ebook I recommend is cheap, it is. It’s less than 5 bucks. Money well spent that you’ll easily make up in savings after you make your first batch of soap. She covers everything you need to know from basic safety all the way up to more technical subjects. It is complete with an FAQ and a ton of recipes to try out. But the most valuable part of it is the encouragement to just try making soap whether your fear is safety related, or because you’re nervous about failing, or whatever your hold up.

If I can do it, you can do it! You can also make some alterations to it like infusing it with flowers.

Measuring cup
Measuring water to mix with the lye
Mixing the ingredients
Ready to start mixing
Mixture consistency
Trace
Transferring to a molder
molder covered with plastic wrap

If your soap happens to develop soda ash (which is perfectly normal and purely cosmetic) check out my tips for removing soda ash from homemade soap.

How to Make Tallow Soap?

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Purely White-3 soap stack

Homesteader’s Tallow Soap

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  • Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

Scale

Instructions

  1. *Be sure to use all standard safety cautions when using lye.*
  2. Set up your mold. You’ll need to work quickly at the end to prevent the soap from hardening before you get it in the molds.
  3. Weigh and measure out your solid fats- tallow & coconut oil into a bowl and set it to melt in a double boiler.
  4. Measure out the sweet almond oil and set it aside.
  5. In your Mixing Container, measure out the water. (I use this one because it pours easily.)
  6. In a small bowl weigh out the lye.
  7. Once the fat is melted, remove it from the heat.
  8. Fill a roasting pan with ice water and set your Mixing Container with water in it inside.
  9. Slowly, sprinkle in the lye, stirring, until it’s all dissolved in the water.
  10. To the melted tallow & coconut oil, stir in the sweet almond oil. (Use a different utensil than you used with the lye.)
  11. Once the temperatures of the liquid fats and lye water are such that they will be about 105-110 degrees when mixed, combine them and stir them together. Check the temperature with the thermometer. If it’s too hot, slowly stir while you allow it to cool to the target range.
  12. Using an immersion blender, mix the solution until it saponifies. Either look for trace or monitor the temperature with a thermometer to see the temperature rise 2-3 degrees indicating that the reaction has taken place.
  13. Quickly, pour or spoon your soap into the molds. If it begins to harden up, bang the mold off the counter. (Like you would a cake pan while trying to get air bubbles from the batter before baking.)
  14. Cover it in plastic wrap and set it in a safe place to harden up for 24 hours before cutting. (If using a silicone mold, I pop it in the fridge for a few hours first, just to be sure I don’t misshape it while removing it.)
  15. Allow the soap to cure for about 3-4 weeks before using.
  • Author: Quinn
  • Prep Time: 15
  • Cook Time: 45
Hardened Tallow Soap

Not a soapmaker? You can still get your hands on this awesome bar of soap! You can try Super Scrub Cold-Process Gardener’s Soap.

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30 Comments

  1. As of May, 2017, the soap book is back in kindle form for $2. Quite a deal! Thanks for sharing….I’ve been rendering tallow for a while, then made tallow candles…now to move on to soap. Very excited!!

    1. Thank you Heidi!! I saw Amazon advertising it, but I forgot to go back and check to see if it was available again. Yea! Cause it is an incredibly helpful resource.

  2. Thanks for the recipe. What is the purpose of covering with plastic?

    1. I can’t remember if there is a specific reason to use it other than to make sure the bars stay clean from debris while they harden up.

  3. I sure am sorry you're having troubles! I've made it dozens of times and never had this issue. I can't remember, did you say if you used water or milk? Milk will "burn" and you have to freeze (or refrigerate it) for the first day or so or it will be a brownish color. Even with freezing it's not a white as using water and has a off-white shade. Goat's milk seems to be a pinkish-white color. I hope your next batch turns out better!

  4. Quinn,
    You know what a wonderful thing to add to the Homestead binder would be. . .an expense sheet for soap making. I’m always trying to do the math, especially when I buy in bulk, about what it costs me to make each bar. . .sometimes very challenging with essential oils etc.

  5. Quinn Veon oh my quinn. . .can't i just come to your house and do an apprenticeship? i'm really good at chores LOL. I used grass fed beef tallow and rendered just as you describe. It was so white and pure when I began but the bars turned yellow. . .so disappointing (and i'm tryign to get ready for the farmers market). i'm trying again. maybe i mislabeled something in the freezer and it was leif lard. will the leif lard yellow or if it was leif lard, maybe it was a saponification thing due to incorrect recipe. thanks for the idea on how to achieve trace with this. i've never heard that before. i'm trying again!!!!!

  6. Did you use pork lard or beef tallow? This recipe is for beef tallow and each fat behaves differently and requires different water/lye ratios to saponify properly. This soap does however trace fast, you're right. I use a thermometer to verify that trace is happened instead of going by sight alone. After I add the fat to the water/lye mix, I'll stir it by hand for a minute or two to get a baseline temp of the solution. They in comes the stick blender and I'll go with that until the temperature raises 3 degrees. I'll confirm for a visual trace and then put it in a mold. Also, you've got to use higher temperatures when making this soap. Usually you'll work with 90 degree soap, but this one I work with at closer to 110-ish degrees. Usually that helps. I have had the bars crack once. I'm not sure what caused it but in your case I'm thinking it might have had to do with either the trace or if you did use lard and not tallow?

  7. ok. . .i've made the soap and i have a couple of trouble shooting questions: 1) this hardens fast, should i have used a lighter trace to prevent that. . .i actually had "globs" of soap under the mixture. . .it was hard to spread the top layer evenly 2) while setting the top cracked. . .what is the trouble shooting advice for that? 3) finally, although i rendered my lard three times and was super careful, i feel the bars look yellowish instead of pure white. i'm not sure how to prevent that.

  8. Quinn,
    I am about to make this soap and have two more questions: First, I am using homemade wooden soap molds. Each one holds approximately 2.75 pound of cured soap and will make 10-12 4 oz. bars. My average recipe for one of these molds uses 36 oz. in oils/butters (fats) prior to adding lye/water and fragrance. Can you help me adjust your recipe to fit the mold? Also, if using milk, should the frozed milk weigh the same as the liquid measurement you give above? Can you use cold liquid milk instead of ice cubes?
    Thank you!

  9. AdrianandAutumn Johnson So sorry! I didn't see this till just now- I get on average 8- 4 ounce bars from this recipe. It is a very mild irritation that a single batch doesn't fill my molds, but a double batch is too big. I find that it takes longer to mix up a double batch and it doesn't seem to incorporate any add-in's quite as nicely. I only do it if I'm really in a pinch.

  10. Quinn, I just made this recipe yesterday and I'm so excited to de-mold it. I know I should just read the directions and be satisfied, but I just want to double check. Does this not need to 'cure' for a few weeks after I take it out of the mold today? Thank you for your blog! It has been quite an adventure trying out new things like rendering tallow for soap and such. 🙂

  11. I'm thinking that it must be the oils that are used in whatever lye soaps you've tried because if the recipe is made correctly (with the proper ratio or oils, water, and lye) there actually isn't any lye remaining in the soap because the lye changed to saponified oils. (That's why some soap makers don't list lye in the ingredients list but will say things like "saponified coconut oil".) This is a great tool for running your recipes through before making soap: https://soapcalc.net/calc/soapcalcwp.asp I'm not sure how to make soap without lye. I haven't tried it yet, though I know it can be done.

  12. Quinn,
    What a wonderful blog. May I ask what kind of tallow this was

    (pig or cow)? Also, where do purchase the stickers you use on the soap? I hope you don’t mind me asking. I sell soap and have wanted some kraft plain stickers to print on and haven’t been satisfied with the ones I found.
    Thanks so much!!!!

    1. It’s beef tallow and I am buying plain Avery circle labels and using a scalloped punch to make the design. Hope that helps 🙂

  13. Quinn Veon …last question, well, maybe lol. How much soap does this recipe yield, approximately? I am looking into purchasing additional silicone molds to accomodate a double batch (my husband has requested a different fragrance than I would like). I know you sell soap, so I assume that you do larger batches at one time as well.

  14. You're too kind! Yes, I did convert it and both the cows & goat's milk make it even better in my opinion. Freeze your milk in ice cube trays and then measure out your ice cubes instead of the water, mixing it in with the lye, but be careful. It's easier to splash the lye mix with partially melted cubes knocking off each other. Ahem. Gently, but thoroughly stir it for about 5 minutes after they have all melted to make sure all the lye is dissolved. Your temp is probably going to be pretty low- like 70-ish degrees which means you can add in your oils at a higher temp. Usually, I add mine straight off the stove. Mix in the sweet almond oil and instead of waiting for it to cool down, pour it right in. I think the temp is usally sitting at about 130F then so when you mix those together it will be right at 100-ish. The only other difference is that you should freeze the soap after you pour it into the mold and cover it so that it stays a nice creamy off-white color instead of turning tan. You can take it out of the freezer after a day or so. Hope that helps!

  15. Quinn, you mentioned above that if you were able to convert this recipe to a milk soap, it would be awesome! I agree!! Did you ever convert it and if so, would you mind sharing the changes? I'm assuming you would just substitute the water with milk, but I know calculations for soap can be tricky! We've done goat's milk soap before and loved it, but the recipe was much more complicated than this one. I'd love to use this simpler recipe and still yield great soap. Love, love, love your site…I may stay up way too late reading everything!

  16. Quinn, I love your blog! I found you through pinterest while looking for nightgown patterns of all thins. Now I think I have gone back and read every single one of your posts! You are such a wealth of knowledge and inspiration! I was wondering about the tallow…I don’t have a tallow source, so I was going to look into my local butcher. I was curious what your thoughts are on the quality of tallow. Does it matter what the source is? Thank you so much for everything!

    1. Wow Karen! That’s a lot of reading! I very much appreciate your having taken the time to share with me that this little space has blessed you in some way 🙂

      It might matter what the quality of the tallow is. Many would say that grass-fed is best and has higher concentrations of some of the beneficial properties (such as the CLA’s). Hope you’re able to find some! Soap making is such fun and I love this particular soap so much.