Crock pot clean
I’ve taken to doing most of my deep frying in bacon fat rather than vegetable oil (I get it from a friend who eats a lot of bacon! And I use olive oil for sauteeing.) I’d already used this particular jar of fat a few times, so I figured it needed to be retired.
What to do with half a quart of grease? Well, we were almost out of soap!
First I had to filter and wash the bacon fat. After melting it and pouring it through a paper towel, I set it to simmering in a pan half full of water.
I sucked out the water from underneath with a baster a few times and replaced it with clean water. As you can see it was pretty dirty at first!
Once the water came clean, I solidified the fat again in order to weigh it.
Over at the MMS Sage Lye Calculator, I figured out the ratios of my fats and fluids to lye; to my 16 oz bacon fat I added an ounce of castor oil for conditioning, an ounce of shea butter, and two ounces of beeswax to promote hardening. MMS Sage’s fragrance calculator then showed me how many ounces of lavender and peppermint essential oils to add (no more guesswork resulting in blah-smelling soap!)
I basically followed this tutorial here for the basic process, except for two things. First, I added the fragrance oils to the soap mix once it came to trace. And second, I divided the soap into two halves and added purple food coloring to one; I glopped and stirred them together in the hopes of getting a beautiful swirly soap.
It worked! (It’s the bacon fat that gave the undyed portion its yellow color).
And oh, it smells good! Josh says it reminds him of Dr. Bronner’s… which is a compliment in my book. -grin-
August 13th, 2011 at 9:09 am
I used to love to make soap (not as accurately and deftly as you, however). It always amazes me how awesome homemade/natural soap looks. You gotta wonder what companies are putting in their bars to color and harden them. Yuck chemicals!