This is a soap recipe I found on an email list – it does not require any heating or melting of the fats. The heat from the Lye/water mixture melts all of the fat during the process. I have used this recipe and it worked great! Remember to be VERY careful working with Lye – it is very caustic.
Ingredients:
8 1/2 lbs rendered Lard
1 can Red Devil Lye (18 oz)
3 cups Borax (20 mule train)
7 cups cold water
Scent of choice if desired: must not contain alcohol-essential oils or
synthetic oils are fine. I prefer the synthetic oils as the scent holds
up better.
Equipment:
- Rubber gloves and protective eye gear
- Big thick plastic bowl for mixing the lye and borax and water (one with a pourable lip is prefered, as you’ll be pouring this into the bucket and you don’t want to slosh)
- 5 gallon bucket for mixing the soap
- Big stick for stirring. I use an old hoe handle, but a dowel rod about the same size will work. No paint on the stick or it will get in the soap.
- Wooden spoon for stirring the lye, borax and water
- Molds for the soap. You can use a cheap plastic storage box from Walmart, and empty yogurt containers.
This makes about 9 pounds of soap, which = about 25 bars. or a lot of 1/3 full yogurt containers. The box I have is big enough for 2 batches of soap. A good size for a single batch would be about 16″ x 16″. Just have extra containers because it seems to multiply!
1. Dump your lard into the 5 gal bucket. Mush it around with the stick to get it spread around the bottom of the bucket. Mix it up well and set this bucket aside for now.
2. In the plastic bowl, measure out 2 cups of borax & dump it in the bowl. CAREFULLY and SLOWLY open up the Red devil lye and pour it into the bowl.( I shake the can of lye before I buy it to make sure that I don’t buy one that sounds like it’s one big ole lump o’lye. You don’t want to have to try to mush up those lumps. Get a can that sounds like you’re shaking up salt) Pour the lye into the bowl with the borax. Carefully stir these 2 ingredients together, mixing well.
3. Measure 5 cups of water into a pitcher. (You can use rain water if you like.
It aides in making bubbles in hard water.) OK. CAREFULLY & SLOWLY pour the water into the lye/borax bowl. Slowly stir the mix until the lye and borax are completely dissolved. Don’t breathe this stuff-it’s not good for the lungs! I make this outside if it’s warm, and open windows if making indoors. Be careful, as this will be quite hot.
4. Pour the lye mixture into the bucket of lard, being careful not to slosh it out.
5. Begin stirring the lye and lard together. When I first start stirring, I kinda “churn” the mixture with the stick so that I don’t splash lye on my face. Continue to stir until all the lard and lye are mixed up. When all stirred up, the mix will look like thick cake batter. Sometimes some of the lye mix will be separated on the bottom of the bucket. This happened this weekend at my class! When the students started pouring the soap into molds, the lye water was sitting on the bucket bottom. If this happens, don’t panic, just dump it back in the bucket and stir some more.
6. Stir until the soap traces. Lift up your stirring stick and drizzle a bit of soap along the top of the mixture of soap. If the line of soap dissolves back into the mix it isn’t ready. If the line you drizzled stays put, you are ready to pour it into the molds. If this doesn’t happen and you’ve been stirring over 10 or 15 minutes, place your bucket of soap down into a sink or tub filled with ice water(Don’t put the ice water in the bucket!) and continue stirring. This helps speed up the process. The ready soap should have the consistency of med thick pudding. You don’t want to let it get too thick or it will be a bear to pour into molds. Add the scent if desired at this point. Just remember as soon as it traces, it’s ready to pour.
7. Pour soap into molds. I just carefully pick up the bucket and pour it into my wooden box or the yougurt containers. When the bucket’s almost empty, I carefully dip my yogurt container in there and dip it out. Remember that this mixture will burn you at this point so you must be careful. Use a rubber spatula to get all the soap out of the bucket.
8. Clean up: Use rubber gloves. Use lots of dish soap and put what you can in the dishwasher if you have one. I love Dawn for this job. It works well.
9. In about 24 hours more or less the soap will be set up enough to cut. If you used individual containers or molds, you can just leave them alone until cured. If you used a box of some sort, you’ll need to cut them into bars before it’s completely dried or it will just crumble into a big mess. I cut when the knife thru the soap feels like set up fudge, and there’s not a puddle of soap trailing along behind my knife cuts. Once cut, I spread the bars out from each other on wax paper lined cardboard boxes. This allows for air circulation while curing.
If you use lard, you have to let the soap cure for 4 weeks. Just cover the boxes of cut soap with a towel and put it up on a high shelf where they are out of reach of any children or animals. The soap will remain caustic (will burn you) until it’s cured.
Ok. That’s it! I hope this doesn’t scare anybody! Find a friend and do this recipe together for starters. It’s easier that way and not as scary. I am not responsible for any lye burns! Just be careful. Hope this will help ya’ll. Good luck and God bless!
Additional Information: This recipe was originally posted on the Christian Self-Reliant Living (CSRL) email list. The original quantities have been adjusted for the new 18 oz. can of Red Devil Lye.