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I wasn’t originally going to publish this today, but I received a few comments on yesterday’s entry about the use of tallow in soap making. I’ve also had a quite a few questions over the years about the use of lard and tallow in my soaps, so I thought I’d finally bite the bullet, as it were, and write a full entry on why I use it, and what the alternatives are if you are morally opposed to using animal products.

I use lard or tallow as the hardening fat in my soaps—it’s what makes the bar hard so it doesn’t turn into a pile of glop the second it gets wet in your shower. Both have a long and esteemed history in soap making, and are still used as the primary fats in many cheap, mass-produced soaps today.

The other factor in creating a hard bar of soap is aging time. Most cold process recipes are formulated for a 3 week aging time, which works when you’ve got a good amount of a hardening fat in the recipe. If you don’t, you’ll need more time—sometimes, substantially more time (like 5 years). It all depends.

I used to work at a grocery store (in the produce department), and I know the tallow/lard gets trimmed off the meat and thrown out at the end of the day by the meat department. I still have friends in the meat department there that will save me their fat trimmings for a day, giving me enough tallow for months worth of soap.

Think about that—one employee (of maybe 10 that work every day) saves me their trimmings for one shift, and it’s enough for probably 10kg of soap. Every other day of the year, that gets thrown out. Think of all that waste. The animal has already been killed (and not for its fat, obviously), and all we’re doing is using the meat (and only the cuts we like, for the most part), and throwing out everything else. That’s shameful. So, I feel like by using tallow I am:

Reducing waste Helping use the rest of an animal that was killed for other reasons, and would be dead regardless of whether or not I rescued some of its fat from the trash bin

So, if you eat meat, I think you should definitely use tallow or lard in your homemade soap. If you can eat meat, there shouldn’t be an ick factor—you can probably even save the tallow from your own dinners. If you’re veg or vegan, feel free to use one of the alternatives I’ve listed above (I’d advocate #2). But hey, it’s something to think about. Feel free to share your thoughts below!