Hello
, I have made dish soap high in coconut oil, I found it very very drying on my hands, to be more environmentally friendly I started making soap with used oils like my mom used to make, I also use tallow and lard that I render. A lot of tallow is wasted, tallow makes wonderful soaps.
The best dish soap I made came out from trying to make transparent soap, I had a lot of hand sanitizer(70% ethyl alcohol) so I used it not to go to waste.
So what I did diferente that made the dish soap better, was to add alcohol and sugar to the recipe. So any recipe you use, I'm sure that if you add some ethyl alcohol (15-35% of oils) and sugar about 10-20% of oils, the soap will be a lot better. It cleans stainless steel beautifully, will have an amazing later and it rinses off of your dishes better it will also be nicer on your hands.
The recipe I often make is all lard or tallow, 1-2% castor oil(only if you already have it), if you want use 10% coconut oil, the recipe works really well with only lard and tallow.
I add citric acid 5% of oils in the water before adding the lye.
0% superfat is ideal you can't cut thru greese well if your soap is superfatted, so you may need to add a little extra lye (5% or so)to get 0% as our lye is not usually 99%, or adjust it on the calculator for your lye to be something like 94%
I make it hot process in a low cooker, if you're concerned about the extra lye do this: use PH strips if it's purple after the soap is cooked, add a teaspoon of oil at a time, let it cook 20-30 minutes test again until your test strip is in the green, you can do a zap test after that, but I would not recommend zap test it until you use ph strips.
Don't want to bother(worrying)with getting a true 0% superfat? No worries follow a
lye calculator and put 0% superfat.
After the soap is cooked you add the alcohol and the sugar(heated up in in very little water to dissolve it very well)
Add the alcohol slowly, cover the slow cooker wait 10 minutes then add the sugar and cook it for about 30 minutes, the soap should be very liquid, the more it evaporates water the clearer and firmer(after cure) the soap will get, it doesn't need to be clear to be good as a dish soap, pour into molds and cut it in 24 hours.
For cold process you can make your soap and let it cure, if you added extra lye it will turn into soda ash, remove the ash with gloves and a damp cloth, then shred the soap, put it in a slow cooker add the alcohol, wait until it dissolves add the sugar, cook it for at least 30 minutes and put into mold, silicone molds are ideal, this soap will be a little sticky, but you could use any mold freeze the soap and get it out of the mold. I have lined plastic containers with food wrap and it worked well.
I have seen videos of a one step cold process that added the alcohol and sugar in one step after trace, just never tried it myself. I prefer HP.
I believe any oil (even used) with a 0% superfat will made a good dishsoap.
Not sure if the attached video will be good, I added oil to a bow for you to see how well it cuts through greese. The photos are the batch I made 2 days ago, there is a darker piece from an older batch, it came out very transparent this time around. Maybe a little too fancy for a dish soap
, but it works really well!
. 90% coconut and 10% castor oil, with citric acid. What properties would the castor oil have, oh you infinitely knowledgeable lovely people?
EDITED TO ADD: I've also started making it as a dual lye soap, 80/20 NaOH/KOH because it makes loading the brush a bit easier, and there are more bubbles (not needed for cleaning, but people expect bubbles so...)
. Aside from calculating the recipe, this was an easy peasy 20 minute project.
