Rendering Lard and Making Vanilla Soap

To celebrate the fact that this channel has reached 100 subscribers, I am going to give stuff away! in this video I am going to make a batch of pure lard soap out of freshly rendered lard. To participate in the giveaway, leave me some constructive feedback or a positive comment in the comment section down below. In the next video I will pick the winner of a bar of soap out of all my batches. That is 4 bars in total!

The recipe to make this soap can by clicking this link.

Video transcript:

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Tony Needs Hobbies. My name is Tony and I am really happy to present to you the twentyfourth video on my channel. And it will be a special one because I have reached one hundred subscribers and promised to do a giveaway once that happened. In a minute I will give you all the details, but first I will explain what this video will be about.

Alright: you might have seen me making soap in some videos. I want to make a special bar to give away in addition to a bar from all my previous batches. This time I am not going to use store-bought fats and oils, but I got myself a few kilograms of leaf lard. Out of that I’m going to render bright white lard and make a hundred percent lard soap out of it which will be vanilla, cinnamon and pinewood scented. I’ll provide you with all the details for the giveaway at the end of the video, but if you want to participate just drop me a (positive) comment down below.

Let’s start with rendering the lard.

This batch will be a pure lard soap. I used thesoapcalculator to make a recipe that you can download from my website tonyneedshobbies.com. I’ll post a link in the description. I calculated the recipe to fill one of my molds. It asks for 940 grams of lard. To make that, I am going to use 1250 grams of leaf lard. This is the fat from a pig that surrounds and protects the kidneys. It makes the purest, most neutral lard and that is what I want, because I don’t want the soap to smell like pork or bacon, but I want it to smell like vanilla with some herbal notes but more on that later. I will do another short video on rendering lard in detail real soon so for now I will only explain the basics. To render as much lard as possible out of the pig’s fat, you need to cut in small cubes. Then put it on the stove in a pot with a thick bottom and a little bit of water. I put it on the lowest heat available to me. This makes rendering a slow process, but the result will be the best. If it gets too hot, it will definitely start to smell like pork and the color will be yellow to brown. If you do it nice and slowly the lard will be perfectly white and shall have no smell to it at all. I filter it using two layers of cheese cloth on a sieve. In the end, it took me around four hours to render enough lard to make this batch of soap. Then I fried the cracklings which are a by-product, and they are excellent as a replacement for croutons in salads.

To make this batch I am going to use demineralized water, sodium hydroxide or lye, safety glasses and safety gloves, a stick blender, a stainless steel spoon and pot, only to be used for soap making, some beakers, the essential oils, the previously prepared lard and off course a soap mold. Find out how I made this one by clicking the link in the top right corner.

For this recipe, I need 360 grams of water to which I add 125 grams of sodium hydroxide. Be sure to wear protective glasses, gloves and clothing with long sleeves. Lye is a very caustic solution, even more so if it’s hot and it will get very hot when dissolving it. When mixed I set the lye aside and preheat the oven to 90 degrees Celsius. Then I add 940 grams of lard to a stainless steel pot with a thick bottom and put it on the lowest heat until it has melted into a clear liquid.

When the temperature of the fat and lye are both between 45 and 55 degrees Celsius, the lye can be added to the lard to start the saponification reaction. To aid the reaction and emulsify the watery lye solution with the lard a stick blender will be used. At first just to stir the liquids. Then a few short pulses and when everything starts to look opaque, longer pulses. After about ten minutes, the emulsion reaches the trace stage. I am making hot process soap, so to keep the reaction going, I will place a lid on top and put it in the oven at 90 degrees Celsius.

After 15 minutes I check to see how it’s going. It is very creamy but definitely not done yet, so I put the lid back on and place the pot back into the oven so that the reaction can continue.

15 minutes later I check again. Around the edge of the pot it starts to go through gel phase. That is what I want for the entire batch, so in the oven it goes again. In the meanwhile I line the mold with some baking paper so that the soap will not stick to the wood.

Another 15 minutes later the whole batch has reached the so called “mashed potato” stage. Saponification is finished so I add the essential oils. I use 10 grams of each of vanilla, cinnamon and pine wood oil to give the soap a vanilla smell with some herbal notes in the background. Then I thoroughly mix the soap and scoop all of it into the mold and let it sit to cure overnight.

Hot process soap can be tested right away. One method is the zap test where you touch the soap with your tongue. If it feels like you’re licking a battery, the soap is not ready to use. I prefer a simple pH test. I dissolve some left over soap in water and put a piece of litmus paper in it. The pH of this soap is around 8, so it is finished and safe to use.

That was some work but totally worth it! Now some details for the giveaway. If you want to participate, just drop me a positive comment below. Then, in my next video I will randomly pick a name out of the commenters and ask you to send me an e-mail with your address information. I will send you a bar of soap out of all the batches I have ever made: 4. They are totally safe to use: I am my own Guinea pig and haven’t used anything else since December last year. So don’t hesitate, drop me a comment and win those bars of soap.

That’ll be all for this video. I hoped you enjoyed it, and if so, please hit the like button and don’t forget subscribing to this channel.

Thank you for watching, Bye bye!