Easiest Beef Tallow Soap Hot Process Recipe

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Clearing up misconceptions about tallow soap making and two tallow soap recipes for you to try out. Tallow can be a sustainable soapmaking ingredient and can also be used as a single oil soap recipe.

This is a piece written by Liz Beavis and you can find out a little more about her at the end. While many people choose to use Vegan or Vegetarian ingredients in soapmaking, Liz uses fat from the animals she raises on her homestead. She's here today to help explain why she thinks that more people, especially those who eat meat and/or have a farm, should consider making tallow soap.

Since I started making soap three years ago, it has been my aim to use tallow produced from butchering our own beef cattle as part of my soap. I have been very happy with tallow as a soap ingredient and I want to share with you a few things that I have learned, which might make you consider using tallow in your soap making too.

1. Tallow is Cheap and Easy to Access

The main reason I wanted to use tallow was that we had an excess of beef fat after butchering our own beef cattle. Beef fat is very easy to render into tallow (see my post about rendering tallow here) and if you don't have your own beef cattle, you can usually buy it pretty cheaply from a butcher. Pork fat (which makes lard) and lamb fat are also good options.

Although it does take a little effort to render the tallow, it works out way cheaper than buying oils like olive, palm, or coconut for soap making. You can usually also by rendered tallow and lard from the supermarket (in Australia it's called "superfry"), which is relatively cheap too.

2. Tallow Soap Doesn't Smell

Often people are worried that tallow soap will smell like meat, but it doesn't! If you render the tallow and strain it correctly, the soap will not smell like meat. It will smell like tallow soap, which is like the old sunlight soap, or the soap your granny used to have in her bathroom. You can use essential oils or fragrance oils to hide the smell if you don't like it, but I make a lot of soaps with no added fragrance and the smell doesn't bother me.

3. Tallow is a Sustainable Ingredient

Compared to oils, which need to be substantially processed (grown in monocultures, harvested, pressed, filtered, bottled, and transported to you from faraway places), requiring energy inputs, beef tallow can usually be produced relatively locally, and it easily processed at home in a pot or slow cooker. The fat from beef and other animals is a waste product from animal meat production and if you eat meat, you may as well also use the by-products such as tallow.

4. Tallow Makes GOOD Soap

Tallow has a very similar composition to palm oil. It makes a hard long-lasting soap with a light creamy lather. Tallow is also similar to human fat, and so it makes a great moisturizer! Tallow soap with a superfat of 6% is a lovely soap for your skin. That means there's six percent of the oils in your recipe stay in your bars as oil and aren't converted into soap. These oils help condition your skin.

If you're interested in trying tallow in soapmaking, you can find recipes and ideas for simple tallow soaps and tallow soaps with other natural ingredients below.

Basic tallow soap recipe

(with a 6% superfat)

1 kg Tallow
132 g Caustic soda (aka lye or sodium hydroxide)
300 ml Water
1-2 tsp Essential oil (optional)

Basic tallow, olive oil and coconut oil recipe

(with a 6% superfat)

500g Tallow
250g Coconut oil
250g Olive oil
142g Caustic soda (aka lye or sodium hydroxide)
300 ml Water
1-2 tsp Essential oil (optional)

Head over here for general instructions for making cold process soap. Here are some more soap recipes (with full instructions) for you to try out:

• Honey and Beeswax Soap Recipe
• 100% Coconut Oil Soap Recipe
• Pure Olive Oil Soap Recipe
• Easy Soap Recipes for the Beginner Soapmaker

This piece is written by homesteader, Liz Beavis. Liz lives on eight acres in southeast Queensland, Australia, with her husband Peter and dogs Taz and Gus. They have a passion for small-scale organic farming and producing and eating real food. They keep chickens, beef steers, two jersey cows, and a big vegetable garden. Liz writes a blog about their farm to both inspire and help others who are interested in self-sufficiency, sustainability, and Permaculture. Find her online at Eight Acres the blog

hansonbons1962.blogspot.com

Source: https://lovelygreens.com/tallow-soapmaking-recipes/