A Lard with Eucalyptus soap recipe.
Yesterday, I worked on another batch of soap. I have always only made vegetable based soaps for various reasons and decided to try out a lard recipe this time. I found a basic recipe online and tweaked the ingredients to make it a little more moisturizing and to make a larger batch.
Basic Lard and Olive Oil Soap Recipe
- 24 ounces Lard
- 24 ounces Olive Oil
- 6.2 ounces of lye (sodium hydroxide)
- 21 ounces cold water
(Important! Measurements must be done in WEIGHT not volume.)
I mixed the oil and lard and put it in my stainless steel pot to slowly melt and heat. I mixed my water and lye and promptly ran away from the fumes. Once both mixtures cooled to 120 degrees, I slowly added the lye solution to the fat. Sapponification took much longer with lard than it does with coconut oil, but with an immersion blender it still only took about 20 minutes to reach tracing. After tracing I added 1.5 ounces of orange infused olive oil and an ounce of eucalyptus essential oil. I stirred with a wooden spoon for another five minutes or so before pouring my soap into my rectangular plastic tub. With a pure lard soap, you can likely cut it into bars after only eight hours. Since this batch was half olive oil, it took roughly 18 hours to be rigid enough to pop it out of the mold and cut.
This recipe turned out really great so far. It took about six weeks of curing time before I could test a bar, and it ended up very silky and moisturizing.