How to Make Homemade Solid Tallow Dish Soap
Make homemade solid tallow dish soap—an easy, zero waste liquid soap replacement. Craft a hard, long-lasting, and customizable soap for your home.
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Why You’ll Love This
Zero-Waste – Creating your own homemade dish-soap is sustainable and eliminates the need for single use plastic.
Ease – Making 100% tallow dish soap is super easy—just one oil and simple ingredients.
Custom – Hard tallow dish soap is fully customizable, allowing you to choose your favorite scent and bar size to fit your family’s needs.
Top Tips for Tallow Dish Soap
- Prep Ahead– Having a clean kitchen and all tools & ingredients laid out and ready beforehand will streamline the soap making process.
- Safety– Lye must be used to create soap and is an extremely alkaline chemical when 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. I recommend Lemongrass – the scent holds well and creates a fresh citrus aroma.
- 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. Cold process soap uses sodium hydroxide lye. You can find it online or in most cleaning areas of stores. This is the one I source.
FAQ: Solid Tallow Dish Soap
Yes, from my experience solid dish soap bars last longer than a standard bottle of liquid dish soap. In my home a 2 ounce tallow dish soap bar will last 2 months. The key to long lasting bar soap – body or dish, is to allow it to dry between uses. Do not leave your homemade dish soap bar in the sink or a place where it is continually wet. This will deteriorate the bar.
No. To make any type of soap an oil is required. Tallow or any other oil reacts with lye during the saponification process to create a new product – soap. In the end there is little leftover oil that would create a greasy residue and no lye in your final dish soap bar.
Yes. Tallow is a saturated fat, which means it is solid at room temperature. Soaps made with tallow tend to be firm, long-lasting, and resistant to becoming mushy when exposed to water. When compared to soaps made with a seed or vegetable oil, tallow soaps tend to have a longer shelf life and take less time to fully cure.
Use tallow dish soap as a replacement for liquid. By using a dish brush, you can create a lather to hand wash dishes.
Why use Tallow For Solid Dish Soap
- 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.
- Nose To Tail 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.
- Abundant
- 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.
Step-by-Step Guide: Homemade Tallow Dish 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 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). Best to mix with a silicone spatula to prevent a hard trace.
Step 6
Pour soap batter into soap mold. These are my favorite. Cool for 15-24 hours until bar has hardened.
Step 7
Once hardened remove soap from mold.
Each bar should weigh approximately 2 ounces once 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 Solid Tallow Dish Soap scented with Lemongrass Essential Oil
Essential Oil Combinations For Tallow Dish Soap
- Spearmint
- Lemongrass
- Lemon 5-Fold
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 dish soap scent.
100% Tallow Dish Soap Recipe
Homemade Solid Tallow Dish Soap
Equipment
Materials
- 22 ounces Tallow
- 6.75 ounces Water
- 3.02 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. This is a 2% Superfat soap, very cleansing and not ideal for the skin.
- Weigh 6.75 ounces of water in a glass measuring cup. A mason jar works well for this.
- In a separate container, weigh 3.02 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 22 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). Best to mix with a silicone spatula to prevent a hard trace.
- Pour soap batter into soap mold and cool for 15-24 hours until bar has hardened.
- Once hardened remove soap from mold. A 2 ounce Bar will last approximately 2 months if stored properly between uses for dishes.
- 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.
Your step by step images and notes are really easy to follow 🙂 I think I’m going to give it a go! We have beef tallow from our own cow and we’ve used it for a lot of facial products., but I’ve never made body or dish soap – I’m inspired!