100% Tallow Soap Recipe: How to Make Homemade Soap
Learn to make 100% pure tallow soap at home with this easy nose-to-tail recipe for natural, skin-soothing benefits in every bar.
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Want to learn how to make tallow dish soap? Check out my recipe for a Solid Tallow Dish Soap Bar!
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Why You’ll Love This
Ease – Making 100% tallow soap is super easy—just one oil and simple ingredients.
Custom – Tallow soap is fully customizable, allowing you to choose your favorite scent, color of choice, and include skin-soothing ingredients for a personal touch to fit your family’s needs.
Top Tips for 100% Tallow Soap
- Prep Ahead– Having a clean kitchen and all tools & ingredients laid out and ready beforehand will streamline the soap making process.
- Safety– To create soap, lye must be used. Lye is an extremely alkaline chemical that in its raw form or mixed with water can easily burn the skin. Once saponified, lye loses its caustic properties. This is why you should use gloves and goggles when making soap and allow your soap to cure for three weeks or more before use. Lye also releases fumes when mixed with water, so it is best to prep your lye solution outside or in a well ventilated area.
- White vinegar– Neutralizes lye and any areas that it comes in contact with either skin or cleaning the counters afterward.
- Citrus Oils- If you’re tempted to use citrus based oils (who doesn’t love a Rosemary Lemon Soap?) make sure to get 3-Fold or 5-Fold oils. Single distilled citrus oils dissipate rapidly and will not scent your homemade tallow soap.
- Trace – Trace is the term used when soap has blended to the consistency of pudding. This is where you can blend in soap additives and scents to customize the tallow soap bar and pour into a mold before it begins to harden.
- Heat Resistant Materials – Use heat resistant materials such as silicone spatulas and glassware as the soap making process creates heat. If using plastic make sure it’s heat resistant like silicone and only use them for soap and nothing else. Plastic will absorb small amounts of soap and lye.
- Lye – Source your lye beforehand. Sodium hydroxide lye is what is used in cold process soap. You can find it online or in most cleaning areas of stores. This is the one I source.
Why use Tallow For Cold Process Soap
- Skin Benefiting Nutrients in Tallow
- Vitamin A – Promotes healthy skin and skin repair.
- Vitamin D – Soothes skin and retains moisture.
- Vitamin E – Antioxidant
- Vitamin K – Vital for protecting the skin barrier.
- Palmitic/Stearic/Oleic Acids – Fatty acids that help protect, hydrate and clean the skin.
- Hard, Long Lasting Cold Processed Soap Bar
- Oils, like tallow, that are solid at room temperature create a hard bar of soap. This is due to the high levels of both palmitic and stearic acids that harden at room temperature creating a bar of soap that is not only solid but also resists turning to mush when it gets wet.
- Allowing your soap to dry between uses will also add to the longevity of your tallow soap bar.
- Lather Properties
- The fatty oleic acids in tallow, when saponified, create a creamy luxurious lather with small white bubbles. This cleansing property is similar in makeup to our own and gentle on skin.
- My Personal Opinion
- Like heals Like! This is a holistic principle and what oil is the closest to your own skin’s composition? Animal fats. Like heals like. Tallow soap leaves the skin soft and supple rather than dried out like so many other soaps. I’ve been using tallow soap for several years now and my skin has never felt dry out of the shower.
- I love using tallow that comes from the beef I purchase for my family allowing for good stewardship of the whole animal.
What Makes Tallow Soap A “Nose-To-Tail” Skincare Product?
We should always consider our stewardship of resources, and tallow is a versatile gift from God that deserves to be used wisely. If you’re sourcing bulk beef, think about using the entire cow. The Nose to Tail approach is not only a waste-not, want-not principle but also a way to honor the cow that gave its life for our nourishment.
Nourishment comes in many forms—both inside the body through food and externally through soap, lotion or anything else we put on our skin.
Tallow is produced by rendering beef fat, where the raw fat is melted to remove any impurities, leaving a pure product. From just one cow, I can create not only cooking oil for my family but also soap and beauty products for the entire year. It’s an abundant, valuable resource and without a specific request butchers regularly discard. If you’re interested in learning how to render your own tallow, check out this post.
What are Soap Additives?
Soap additives are anything you add into your soap batter once trace is reached. These can aid in lather production, create a custom scent or color to soap or add in skin soothing benefits to your finished tallow soap bar.
Examples of additives are:
- Colloidal Oats
- Essential Oils
- Floral Petals
- Clay Powders
- Colorants – If you’re interested in natural colorants check out this book!
How To Make Homemade Cold Process Tallow Soap
Note: There are two main methods to create soap. Hot process and Cold Process. This is a cold process recipe which means it creates soap at room temperature instead of adding a heat source to the soap process.
Note: Always mix lye into water not water into lye to prevent over heating the solution.
*If you choose to adjust this recipe or create your own make sure to consult soapcalc.net to formulate properly.
Step-by-Step Guide: Homemade tallow soap
Step 1
Weigh your water and lye separately and mix your lye water solution in a glass vessel. Set aside to cool, turning from cloudy to clear.
Step 2
Melt your weighed tallow into liquid form over low heat in a large pot. Roughly 100ºF (I have a separate dutch oven for soap making)
Step 3
Carefully add the lye solution to the melted tallow.
Step 4
Using an immersion blender, begin to mix the soap. Continue blending until soap reaches trace. Similar consistency to light pudding.
Step 5
Blend in desired scent (or leave unscented) and any additives. Best to mix with a silicone spatula to prevent a hard trace.
Step 6
Pour soap batter into soap mold. Decorate top if desired and cool for 15-24 hours until bar has hardened.
Step 7
Once hardened remove soap from mold and cut into desired bar size. A 1″ Bar will weigh approximately 4 ounces when cured.
Cure bars in a cool well ventilated space for three weeks before use. Allowing your soap to fully saponify and harden.
Pictured is my Rosemary Lemon Tallow Soap colored with Spirulina Powder
Essential Oil Combinations For Tallow Soap
- Lavender Mint
- Rosemary Lemon
- Basil Mint
- Bergamont
- Rose Geranium
- Cedarwood Lemongrass
Any scent that you desire can be used in soap. Note that citrus oils dissipate quickly and you will need a 3-Fold or 5-Fold oil to create a citrus soap bar.
Comment below your favorite soap scent.
100% Tallow Soap Recipe
100% Tallow Soap
Materials
- 32 ounces Tallow
- 9.52 ounces Water
- 4.26 ounces Sodium Hydroxide Lye
- 1.5 ounces Essential Oil optional
Instructions
- Make sure to weigh all ingredients with a digital scale and wear safety equipment. Do not use metal pans (except stainless steel) to make soap as it creates a reaction with lye that gives off toxic fumes.
- Weigh 9.52 ounces of water in a glass measuring cup. A mason jar works well for this.
- In a separate container, weigh 4.26 ounces of sodium hydroxide lye.
- Slowly mix lye into the weighed water, stirring continuously to ensure lye completely dissolves. A chemical reaction will immediately begin giving off heat and fumes. Make sure to do this in a well ventilated area. Set lye solution aside to cool. It will turn from cloudy to clear.
- Weigh 32 ounces of tallow and melt over low heat in a large pot. Roughly 100ºF (I have a separate dutch oven for soap making)
- Carefully add the lye solution to the melted tallow.
- Using an immersion blender, begin to mix the soap. Continue blending until soap reaches trace. Similar consistency to light pudding.
- Blend in desired scent (or leave unscented) and any additives. Best to mix with a silicone spatula to prevent a hard trace.
- Pour soap batter into soap mold. Decorate top if desired and cool for 15-24 hours until bar has hardened.
- Once hardened remove soap from mold and cut into desired bar size. A 1" Bar will weigh approximately 4 ounces when cured.
- Cure bars in a cool well ventilated space for three weeks before use. Allowing your soap to fully saponify and harden.
Want to learn more about the soap making process? Ellen Ruth Soap on YouTube is an excellent resource.
I make shampoo body wash bars with our sheeps milk and I have been wanting to do tallow soap so this is perfect thank you!!
Oh I bet the sheep milk makes a creamy bar! You could always use the tallow as your oil base and the milk for your lye solution. That would be luxurious.
I have never made tallow soap, but you make it look so easy! I definitely want to try it this year!
This is such a great guide for making soap. It’s been many years since I made my own soap, somehow I stopped doing it, but it’s something I want to get back into. I’ll save your recipe and use it to get me started up again! Your instructions are really good and easy to follow. Thanks so much for sharing!
Where does the green come into play?
Hi Kenzie, the green in this soap is made with spiraling powder. It is a soap additive for coloring purposes only. You can see I add it to the soap batter in step 5, after the soap base has been created. It is not a required step in the soap making process and is purely for decorative purposes. Also in step 7 I noted the soap is colored with spirulina powder. If you’re interested in natural soap colorants there is a wonderful book that I recommend in the post.