kitchen grease?

purpleorchid92 · May 19, 2013

Does anyone keep and use their kitchen grease for soapmaking? I know that's what people did in the old days, but how about now when many oils and fats are readily available. I was just curious.....

lizflowers42 · May 19, 2013

I personally don't cook with animal fats, so the only left over grease I have is left over vegetable oils and I did try soaping with them, but got greasy smelling soap. I didn't deodorize them though....but here is a tutorial that I did see for animal fat left over from cooking: http://littlehouseinthesuburbs.com/2008/10/if-youre-saying-to-yourself-ivory-i.html

Rachelmf · May 19, 2013

I have thought about it, but I haven't tried it. In my case, it would take a very long time to save up enough of it to make it worth my while. And, as you said, many oils and fats are readily available.

Ruthie · May 19, 2013

I can't see this being a worth-while venture unless one had farm animals and did butchering or had it done. It would take a lot!

Theda · May 19, 2013

My dad used to make soap with the kitchen drippings. I'm not sure what he did exactly - I wasn't too interested at the time. I do remember that we only used it in the utility sink.

purpleorchid92 · May 19, 2013

I was considering asking friends and family to save their kitchen grease so I could use it. I guess it would probably make a good laundry soap.

lsg · May 19, 2013

It is certainly feasible to keep and recycle kitchen fats if you use enough of them. They will need to be cleaned. Here is a link on how to do that. We recycle almost everything else, why not cooking fats?

http://sustainablescientist.net/2013/03/04/making-bacon-soap/

purpleorchid92 · May 19, 2013

Thanks for the tutorials! I think that I'm going to give this a go. I recycle everything as much as possible, and compost for the garden, so why not??

meeplesoap · May 20, 2013

Yes, I recycle our kitchen grease into soap. Since it doesn't degrade, it jacks up your sink if you pour it down, and smells horrible in the compost, it seems the easiest and greenest thing to do with it.

I do keep my fats separated by type (beef/pork/duck) into coffee cups. Then I clean it by boiling and pop it in the freezer. Cleaned properly, it doesn't have any sort of smell (other than soapy) after saponification, but I still make my soap with coffee and coffee grounds. Works well at the kitchen sink for cleaning dirty hands!

(it also makes a good laundry soap!)

juliet · May 20, 2013

I played around with this a couple of weeks ago. I had some tallow, shop bought, and I made a soap from that with some pork fat and chicken fat from roasts. The soap came out very nicely, lovely and white and the bars are getting nicely hard. It has pretty much zero bubbly lather though, just creamy.

DeeAnna · May 20, 2013

This past Christmas, I made a soap from the grease collected from the broth I made from the carcase and trimmings left over from our smoked turkey. Soaped well, smells good, works fine.

purpleorchid92 · May 20, 2013

Thanks for the replies everyone I'm going to give it a go. We usually have drippings around from bacon fat and roasts etc...

kitchen grease?

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