Butcher's Lard Soap -- very long.

Whoa, I made a crazy batch of soap yesterday afternoon. It's still in the mold, so no pictures yet, but this one's behaving oddly.

My husband's a butcher; he runs his own high-end "All-Natural", no-hormones added, locally sourced butcher shop. Over the past few months, he's been bringing in a few whole hogs, breaking them, selling some of the delicacies to his preferred customer list, rendering the lard, and selling it.

His customers have been raving about the lard in pie crust. I'm fairly famous for my butter/shortening pie crust -- when I tried to make pie crust with this lard, I found it to be very wet. Flour + chilled lard almost made a pie crust on its own. I asked him about forcing more water out of the lard, and he said he was following the direction of two other "old-time" butchers. They render it over heat very slowly and filter out the cracklings.

This is fat from the whole hog, not just fatback or leaf lard. It's much creamier, even when chilled, than I had expected. It acts like softened butter.

Using SoapCalc, I put together a recipe for a lard/olive oil soap, using up a bit of palm oil and ghee I had left over and a dash of castor oil (trying to clean out some oils before expiration date). I'm also trying to figure out what weight of oils my mold will hold. Using those ideas, I came up with this recipe:

Olive Oil: 35.66% 612 g
Lard: 26.81% 460g
Shea Butter: 11.66% 200g
Ghee: 9.73% 167g
Castor Oil: 10.49% 180g
Palm Oil (all that I had): 5.65% 97g

Total weight of oil--> 1716
Water as percent of oil 38%
Superfat 9%

Distilled water 652.08g
Lye (NaOH): 215.916g

To this I added a bit of cardamon essential oil from Brambleberry -- just about 2 g. I didn't want it to seize, but I wanted it lightly scented in case the lard carried a smell.

Everything mixed well, but the ghee had a hard time melting in the presence of lye. I ended up putting the pot of oils and lye on the burner (very low) to force the ghee to melt. Temp got up to about 150! Yikes. (Not interested in doing THAT again.) After fats were melted, I put the pot on a cool water filled sink and added OO and castor oil.

From then on, everything worked well. Took a long time to reach trace, but it did eventually, and adding the cardamom didn't make anything seize. I poured into my mold, did some decorating, covered, and wrapped it in towels.

I checked it at about five hours -- it was fully set up, and when I touched the top with my finger there was a faint greasy feel, but no oil on the sides or top. I had been expecting it to be quite hot, but the side of the mold was only barely warm to the touch. Did a zap test -- kaPOW!. Ahem. OK, so I figured that I was being obsessive by checking it this early (My last batch of OO only set up so quickly that it was hard to cut, and my previous batch of OO, Palm, CO almost overheated.) and that I'd recheck it in the morning.

This morning (12 hours from molding), it looks no different than last night, but it is much warmer. I haven't zap tested it, because I guess it's just going through a really long gel? Once it cools, I'll zap test again.

Both the olive oil and the lard were free, so if this is a disaster loaf, then it's fine. I've got notes and the learning experience.

Question is this -- I think the lard may have too much water in it judging from my own experience with it when making pie crust. (Moisture in oil --> extra lye) How do you drive more moisture out of the lard to make it harder and whiter? Or, does anyone have a SAP value for bacon grease? The texture of this product is more like bacon grease, without that strong scent.

If it's a disaster, I guess I could try saving it by rebatching, but how much oil would I add? I don't know how much extra lye is likely to be in the soap. Hmmm.

Once I unmold, I'll post pictures.

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(My husband's customers LOVE this lard and it's selling at a premium price, so I don't really need to use it up. However, he may bring in sides of beef in the future and he doesn't expect the tallow to move at all. I'm playing with the "homemade" lard now in preparation of having to deal with "homemade" tallow in the future.)

That sounds like fantastic soap! It will be sought after. I make plain white unscented lard soap for my daughter and granddaughters for their face. Daugter says it helps her rosacea and granddaughters both teens, say it helps their break outs. You don't scrub your face with it, just rub it on and rinse. Just wait another day or so if needed til your soap sets up. Take all the lard you can for your soap. The tallow makes the hardest bar but the tallow is a bit harder to render. Just make sure your husband grinds it first for you. Makes it easier than trying to cut it in small enough pieces. I put the tallow in the freezer after rendering.

I have only rendered lard once, so I'm no expert, but seems to make it harder and whiter you just want to render once more. I melted with water, nice strong boil, and then let it sit in the fridge overnight. In the morning the lard and water were separate and I just used the lard from on top. There was a bit of transition material in the middle....a wetter less pure lard that I did not use. I am thinking that a re rendering might also give you a bit of softer lard you can dispose of, and a harder lard for soap.

LilahB, thanks for the input! I've heard that lard soaps are very nice.

ToniD; I'm definitely going to use your technique next time I use the lard. I'd feel better if mine looked a bit like the stuff in the grocery store.

That sounds like it will be a very nice soap!

If you are concerned about the lye having some residual water, you might try setting your superfat higher, say 10%.

However, I agree with the previous poster, if you heat the lard (gently) just so it melts and then chill it again, if there's water it should separate out. However, I'm not quite sure how water could remain in the lard without separating out as oil and water generally don't form a stable emulsion.

I don't know if I've been much help, sorry! I have rendered tallow and it didn't carry any extra water.

Good luck!

It stayed warm through most of the day.

My husband wanted to see it, so I uncovered it just now (24 hours after molding). No zap on the surface, and the surface is harder and dryer. There's not much give, so I wondered if I'm now heading towards a soap that's going to end up too hard to cut.

Turned it out of its mold, and I've got three pale discs on the bottom of the loaf. Zap tested one -- it zapped. The bottom was a bit oily, but there's no pooling, etc. I wasn't quite sure what to do with it at that point, so I rotated it back into the mold and decided to let it sit for another 12 - 18 hours. I think the fact that it's not sweating lye and the top isn't zapping is a good sign.

I don't know what to think about the three paler discs at the bottom (about the size of a half dollar or quarter). Maybe they'll reabsorb by tomorrow??

Patience. Patience. Patience.

This is really interesting! Please post photos!!! Please???

Suisan2 said:

Whoa, I made a crazy batch of soap yesterday afternoon. It's still in the mold, so no pictures yet, but this one's behaving oddly.

Ghee: 9.73% 167g
Castor Oil: 10.49% 180g
Distilled water 652.08g
Lye (NaOH): 215.916g

Everything mixed well, but the ghee had a hard time melting in the presence of lye. I ended up putting the pot of oils and lye on the burner (very low) to force the ghee to melt. Temp got up to about 150! Yikes. (Not interested in doing THAT again.) After fats were melted, I put the pot on a cool water filled sink and added OO and castor oil.

Click to expand...

Editing and Bolding are mine.
here's a few things I question:
1. Castor oil at 10% is a little high IMO. Most keep it about 5% from my research.
2. Was the lye added to melted oils? You say the ghee had a hard time melting in the lye. Not sure I understand what you mean. Did you add the ghee to hot lye water? It didn't melt so you put it all back on the stove? I've no experience with that. I always start with all my oils melted and then add lye water. However, there are some who add smoking hot lye to cold oil and it melts, supposedly.

I've rendered tallow several times. Here's my method. I use a large 5 gallon stock pot and add my fat and about a gallon or so of water and about 1/2 cup salt. This is my first render. I boil it on low heat, mixing it often for several hours. You see a brown scum form at the top and it may even come close to going over the pot. Keep from getting too hot. I pour off the melted fat & water through a wire strainer. Most of the cracklings stay on the bottom. Cool overnight.

The next morning I remove the hard lard, and scrape the bottom of it to remove any extra gunk. I melt the fat again and add a little water (I want it clean ). This is the second render. I again pour off the fat through a filter and let cool.

The third morning I remove the hardened lard, scrape away the gunk on the bottom and heat on low. When I do this I often still get a little foaming and popping going on, so I know that there is still some water in it. I keep it on low heat until the popping stops and the melted fat is clear. I end up with very clean and hard tallow this way.

Hope this helps.

IWantItGreen, thanks for your input. Next time I get some lard from him, I'm definitely going to process it a few more times. As far as I can tell, he's only melting the fat they recover (mostly from just under the skin).

I'll look again at the castor oil percentage. I made up the recipe because I had *exactly* that amount of Palm and Ghee. I used up most of the lard I had, so I used Olive oil for the remainder, and I think I added 10% castor oil because I had read not to go over 10%.

I made up the lye solution and added it to the hard oils (I think I should have melted them first, or added the lye to only the ghee and shea while it was at its hottest.) When the ghee and shea refused to melt, I put the entire lye plus hard oils combo on a burner to melt. An experience I do not want to repeat. Then I took it off heat, added the oils, and mixed/blended.

I took some pictures this morning. Next post.

I decided to take some photos today. Then I couldn't help myself and ended up trimming a bit off the ends to see how far in the spots go.

Top is pretty.


But the sides and bottom scare me. Too many pale white spots:








So then, while I was taking pictures, I decided to trim off the ends and follow the lye into the loaf.



Both ends were like this -- completely clean with just the barest bit trimmed off. So then I cut it through the middle.



I can see a few tiny pinprick spots -- air bubbles? Lye? Hard to say right now, but I was expecting to see a disaster in there.

I have to come back to it this afternoon and cut it into bars, but I'm still going to cure this one for a LONNNNNG time before I decide what to do with it.

That looks so beautiful and creamy. And the top detail is beautiful! Don't forget to spray alcohol on it.

I don't know whether the odd spots are lye, but I have to agree that the soap is gorgeous! What did you do to create the line? How did you keep from mussing it when you did the rest of the pour?

I fixed a batch that had excess lye once. Do you still think you'll need the info? If so, I'll type it up.

I sliced the rest into bars - I've got no zap now, so I think I was worrying for nothing. (Although I'm still not sure what caused those spots.)

To make the "pencil line", you pour part of your soap when it's pretty thin. Bang the mold on the table a few times to make the top flatten out.

Then put a powder (I used powdered cinnamon, but you could use charcoal, mica, etc.) in a tea strainer and sift a small amount over the top of your poured soap. (Not too much or the bar will separate into two halves as if cures.) Then wipe down the edges of the mold (this part is harder than it seems -- I couldn't get right down next to the soap without sticking my finger in it). Bring the rest of your batch to a medium or heavy trace, and let the first layer set up a bit.

Then, using a spoon, carefully lay your soap on top of the line. Don't pour from the bowl from any height as the pour will break through the pencil line.

I clearly need to use a LOT more cardamon than I did. I was measuring everything in grams, and the ratio of scent to pound of oil was in ounces per pound. So instead of 2 ounces, I added 2 grams. Uhhh. That's not right! It smelled faintly of cardamon when it was first setting up, but now it doesn't smell of cardamon at all. But it doesn't smell like pork either.

I'm really happy with the way the top turned out -- I was trying for something more dramatic, but the soap was taking forever to get stiff enough to hold shapes, and I didn't want to burn out the blender. It's a happy accident -- I ended up with a design I really like.

I'll post pictures of the bars later on.

Thanks for explaining the method! I will be trying this once I get a log mold.

I know this is an old thread but does anyone think there would be a problem with me rendering pig fat for soaping in my CP soap pots? I definitely wouldn't put anything I would eat in those pots.

I assume your pots are stainless steel? They should be fine for rendering.

Why did one commenter say to spray the top with alcohol? I know for heat and pour soap you do that for air bubbles. Not sure about finished CP soap.

whitetulips said:

Why did one commenter say to spray the top with alcohol? I know for heat and pour soap you do that for air bubbles. Not sure about finished CP soap.

Click to expand...

It helps to keep ash from forming.

whitetulips said:

Why did one commenter say to spray the top with alcohol? I know for heat and pour soap you do that for air bubbles. Not sure about finished CP soap.

Click to expand...

To prevent ash from forming on the soap. I've never experienced ash but its basically just a cosmetic dusty look some soap gets when exposed to air. I believe.

hehehehe. we posted at the same time!

I love the simplicity of this soap with nothing but the pencil line. Good job!