How to Make Super Simple DIY Tallow Soap [30-Minute Recipe]

My soaps generally use a tallow (beef fat) recipe. We raise our own beef cattle, and I don’t like wasting anything, bring in the steak & kidney pies and liverwurst, so over time, I’ve developed an excellent formula for tallow soap!

I don’t get a lot of time during the week, so soap making, for me, needs to be quick and efficient. No tiny little batches, but pounds at a time, and I need to get it to trace (trace = when soap thickens, further explanation below) as quick as possible so I could batch it up and leave it to cure.

To make tallow soap, you can use tallow, coconut oil, olive oil, castor oil, some fragrances, and lye.

This may not be the most decorative soap, but it is extremely practical! You can whip up 12 bars of soap, 130 grams each, in 30 minutes. That includes getting (and finding – always a problem in my house) the ingredients! So, let’s get into it!

Using Tallow as a Soap Ingredient and Tallow Alternatives

You’ll need several oils to make this beef tallow soap recipe. However, the essential ingredient is a nice, thick fat to keep your soap in bar form.

If you want to learn how to render tallow, you might want to read my other article, The Differences: Tallow vs Lard vs Schmaltz vs Suet and How to Use Them. Still, if you have beef fat to work with, you might find this tutorial helpful for now.

If you don’t have beef trimmings to work with, you can either buy tallow or use a replacement.

Tallow and lard both make lovely hard soap. Plus, they’re sustainable, practical, and soothing ingredients. If you want to learn more about why tallow is such as excellent soap base, you might find this video interesting:

However, shea or cocoa butter would be suitable as a replacement. Add some beeswax if you aren’t using tallow to harden your soap up a bit more. We don’t want it going all gluggy the minute it gets wet!

Quick, Easy DIY Beef Tallow Soap Recipe

Ingredients

To make this soap recipe, you’ll want a nice blend of oils with a bit of fragrance to keep the soap from smelling beefy.

Here’s the mixture that I’ve perfected over time:

• Beef tallow: 45%
• Coconut oil: 25%
• Olive oil (Pomace): 20%
• Castor oil: 10%
• Essential oils (Lavender 11 gr, Petitgrain 18 gr, Rosemary 2 gr)

You can get your ingredients from Amazon (links above) or Starwest Botanicals.

I use soapcalc.net for all my soap calculations, and running this through the calculator at 1000gr oils, 5% superfat, ends up with this recipe for beef tallow soap:

• Beef tallow: 450 gr
• Coconut oil: 250 gr
• Olive oil (Pomace): 200 gr
• Castor oil: 100 gr
• Water: 380 gr
• Lye (NaOH): 142.14 gr
• Fragrance/essential oil: 31 gr

Tools You Need

This soap recipe requires quite a few tools, but you probably already have most of them. Here’s the summary:

• Pyrex jugs or measuring cups. I use a 500 ml and a 2 liter.
• Plastic container for lye. I use an old cup that I don’t need anymore. Keep this cup for lye only!
• Scales. I have one big one and one very accurate, small one. The big one is for oils and fats, while the small one is for lye, essential oils, etc.
• A microwave. You could get by without a microwave, but then you’d need to set up a double boiler, making this tallow soap recipe take longer.
• Whisk or spoon (stainless). Stainless utensils are much easier to clean than wooden ones, and stainless steel is safe to use with lye.
• Stick blender. A blender stick will make the mixing process super fast and straightforward, but if you have plenty of time on your hands, you could always use a whisk and some elbow grease.
• Thermometer. Candy thermometers are best because they’re easy to clean, but be sure to get an accurate one.
• Mold. I used to use a plastic container. Any plastic container, pretty much. Now I’m getting more fancy with a silicone mold that makes perfectly shaped soaps. Both are perfectly fine. You just need to cut the soap to shape before the soap is hard as a rock when using a plastic container. I like the silicone mold because I can quickly get the soaps out, even after leaving them for weeks.
• Blankets/towels for insulation. One of these days, I’m going to whip up a cozy, snuggly, soap-sleeping bag. Until then, I use hand towels or old washable cloth nappies.

30-Minute Beef Tallow Soap Recipe Instructions: Step-By-Step

1. Measure out the water in a Pyrex jug (mine is 500ml, but bigger would be better).
2. Measure out the lye carefully. Lye is caustic and can burn the skin. Wear gloves and protective gear if you like. Don’t touch it, and don’t get it on your skin.
3. Add the lye to the water (not the other way around!) and stir to dissolve. The mixture will get hot and will give off a fume. Don’t breathe the fume, and make sure you’re in a well-aerated space or outside.
4. Add your tallow to a big Pyrex jug (2-liter or bigger) while the lye cools.
5. Melt the tallow in the microwave. This takes about 6-7 minutes in my microwave, but I melt it in 2-minute intervals. Be careful grabbing the jug – it might be hot.
6. Once the tallow is pretty well melted, add the other oils – the coconut, olive, and castor oils. Sometimes the coconut oil can be solid in cold weather or early in the morning. If it’s in a wide-mouth jar or similar, that’s no problem. Just scoop it out to the correct measurement. It can be hard to get out if it’s in a bottle. I usually give it a bit of a go in the microwave to liquefy or sit it in a bath of hot water.
7. Give the oils another blast in the microwave until they are all melted. Stir to combine them all.
8. Check the temperature of the lye and the temperature of the oil. Once they are both at the same temperature, you can mix them. If the oils cool down faster than the lye, wait until the lye is at about 140F (60C), and gently re-heat oils until they are also at 140F (60C).
9. Pour the lye and water mixture into the oils, and stir or mix! At this stage, I introduce my stick blender. A 5-minute blast with the stick blender gets the soap to trace. ‘Trace’ is when your oil and lye mixture thickens. You’ll see a trace or trail when you pull the stick blender or a spoon through the mix. Rather than being fully liquid with a smooth surface, you’ll now see lines through your soap.
10. Once you get to trace, add the essential oils and stir. The soap will thicken quickly, so you should do this quickly.
11. Get the mix into your mold straight away. If you use a silicone mold, place it on a chopping board. This gives it a bit of rigidity and allows you to bang it to get rid of air. That makes a lovely smooth-topped, flat soap.
12. Cover your soap with plastic wrap. Then, wrap the whole lot up in a nice warm blanket to stop it from cooling down too quickly, resulting in cracks, etc.
13. Let the soap cure for at least two weeks, and voila! You have soap! I like to leave mine to cure for as long as possible, but I usually use them after a month. The longer, the better, though!
14. Toss all your tools and jugs into a bucket of vinegar and water. Vinegar neutralizes lye. Same for you – if you were to get some on your skin, rinse with vinegar rather than water.

Extra Tallow Soap Recipe Notes

Before closing, you should know some special considerations, especially if this is your first time making soap.

Knowing when your soap is at the right consistency, what’s safe and what’s not, and how to care for the soap after pouring can make the process very simple.

Trace and How To Identify It

The photo below shows a good, thick trace. See the lines in the mixture? It’s like a muffin mixture or a landscape rather than a flat lake. That’s what you’re aiming for. I blend until I get a thick trace. You could batch it up with less trace than the photo, but a nice thick trace speeds up the hardening process.

Safety Notes For Working With Lye

Measure all your ingredients very carefully, especially the lye. Be careful handling lye; don’t breathe the fumes, make sure your workspace is well aerated (in front of a window or outside), and don’t touch the lye or get it on your skin.

Once you’re done with the soapmaking process, use a vinegar soak to neutralize the lye before cleaning anything.

Tips For Curing

Be sure to cover the soap after pouring. Doing so will help the bars come out nice, smooth, and even.

Warming your freshly poured soaps will also ensure they cool slowly, helping them “set up” and cure into a solid bar.

The longer you leave your soap to cure, the better it gets. As I mentioned, mine only cure for around a month, but waiting longer will give you a more solid soap with a rich lather.

Finding Soap Making Supplies

You can get all your soapmaking equipment in a kit, too. Some of these will be melt & pour, which is great for doing it with kids, and some are entirely from scratch. Have a look at some bestsellers:

Final Thoughts

I hope this DIY tallow soap recipe serves you as well as it has served me! Beef tallow soap is super easy to make, quick to process, and thrifty; plus, it’s a great use of materials.

If you try out this soap or have any soapmaking tips to share, leave them in the comments. We love learning from you all!

Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful day!

More Reading on Soap Making and Homesteading:

• 8 Best Soap Making Books For Beginners [Pros and Cons Review]
• The Differences: Tallow vs Lard vs Schmaltz vs Suet and How to Use Them
• 71 Practical Homesteading Skills and Ideas You Can Learn Today

 

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