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Inexpensive

Budget lard and canola bar

Three plain white lard and canola soap bars beside a block of lard, a dish of coconut oil and a small glass jug of golden rapeseed oil on an orange backdrop

Lard, coconut oil and canola oil, three of the cheapest fats in the supermarket, make a hard, creamy everyday bar for very little money. A pinch of EDTA and a few drops of rosemary extract help the canola keep through the cure. Unscented.

Skill
Beginner
Method
Cold process
Batch
1000 g of oils about 1433 g of batter
Hands-on
1 hour
Cure
6 weeks
Gel phase
Either way gel or not, both work
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What you need

For 1000 g of oils, which fills a 1.5 litre loaf mould. Weigh everything, liquids included.

Lard · 50.0 % 500 g 17.64 oz
Coconut Oil · 25.0 % 250 g 8.82 oz
Rapeseed Oil - Low Erucic Acid · 25.0 % 250 g 8.82 oz
Sodium hydroxide (NaOH) · the lye, 100 % pure 142.1 g 5.01 oz
Distilled water · for a 33 % lye solution 288.4 g 10.17 oz
Tetrasodium EDTA · dissolved in the water before the lye, against rancid spots 1.5 g 0.05 oz
Rosemary extract (ROE) · stirred into the fresh canola oil, against rancid spots 1 g 0.04 oz
Superfat
5 %
Temperatures
Oils and lye solution each between 35 and 43 °C (95 and 110 °F)

Resize or change it in the calculator

Method

  1. Get ready

    Put on splash goggles, nitrile gloves and long sleeves, open a window or turn on the extractor fan, and keep children and pets out of the room. Set out a 1.5 litre loaf mould, level, where it can stay for two days.

  2. Weigh the fats

    Weigh 500 g lard and 250 g coconut oil into the pot, and 250 g canola oil into a jug.

  3. Protect the canola oil

    Weigh 1 g of rosemary extract, about 30 to 50 drops, into the canola oil and stir it in straight away, while the oil is fresh.

  4. Dissolve the EDTA

    Weigh 288.4 g distilled water into a heat-safe lye jug and stir in 1.5 g tetrasodium EDTA, roughly a third to half a teaspoon but better weighed, until it has dissolved.

  5. Make the lye solution

    Weigh 142.1 g sodium hydroxide into a small, dry container. By an open window, pour it slowly into the EDTA water, never the water onto the lye, and stir until it runs clear, keeping your face away from the vapour. Leave it to cool, labelled and out of reach.

  6. Melt the fats

    Melt the lard and coconut oil together on the lowest heat until clear, then pour in the canola oil.

  7. Check the temperatures

    Go ahead when the oils and the lye solution are both between 35 and 43 °C (95 and 110 °F). Much cooler and the lard starts to set, which thickens the batter before it has really traced.

  8. Blend to light trace

    Pour the lye solution into the oils down the shaft of the stick blender, then pulse for a few seconds and stir, over and over, until the batter is opaque and a drizzle leaves a faint line on the surface.

  9. Pour and cover

    Pour into the mould, tap it firmly on the worktop to raise air bubbles, and cover it with a lid or board and a folded towel for a day. A warm loaf firms up sooner.

  10. Clean up with your gloves on

    Wipe the raw batter off the pot and tools with paper towels into the bin, then wash everything in hot soapy water.

  11. Unmould and cut

    After 24 to 48 hours, when the loaf is firm and has pulled away from the sides, unmould it with gloves on and cut it into bars about 2.5 cm (1 in) thick. Lard soap starts white and a little soft, which is normal.

  12. Cure for six weeks

    Stand the bars on edge in a dry, airy place out of the sun, a finger's width apart and not stacked, for six weeks, turning them every few days. Lard soap keeps hardening for weeks, and the full cure makes it last longer in use.

  13. Store it cool and dark

    Keep the cured bars somewhere cool, dark and airy, not in a closed plastic box or beside a radiator: heat and light both speed the reaction that turns canola rancid.

Tips

  • Buy a fresh bottle of canola oil and check the date. An antioxidant can slow rancidity down but cannot rescue oil that has already started to turn.
  • In British supermarkets rapeseed oil is often sold simply as vegetable oil, so check the label says rapeseed. Don't swap in soybean, sunflower, maize or cottonseed oil without running the recipe through the calculator again: they are half or more linoleic acid and spot more easily, so keep any of them under a third of the oils.
  • The EDTA and rosemary extract are optional and don't change the lye. Leave them out and the bar is the same soap, only more likely to show orange spots after some months.
  • Our soy-free budget bar uses high-oleic sunflower oil and needs neither additive; our old-fashioned lard bar is just lard and coconut oil; and our supermarket oils bar does without animal fat.

Why make it

The cheapest bar here that is still a good one: lard, coconut oil and rapeseed (canola) oil, fats most supermarkets sell. Lard gives a hard, creamy bar with a gentle lather, as it did in farmhouse soap for generations, and coconut oil lifts the lather; hardness 43, cleansing 18 and conditioning 53 make it an all-round bar for hands and body. The catch is the canola. About a third of it is linoleic and linolenic acid, which oxidise and can show as orange spots over a long cure. The tetrasodium EDTA and rosemary extract are there for that: in Kevin Dunn's test in olive oil soap, each at 0.1 % of the oils, close to the doses here, kept the soap from starting to turn for more than four times as long as plain soap. Fresh oil and cool, dark storage matter as much.

Sources

What tradition, makers' experience and research say about soaps like this, each labelled for what it is. It is not medical advice, and no soap treats a skin condition: if you have one, ask a doctor or pharmacist.

What the numbers say

  • Lauric acid 12.3 %
  • Myristic acid 5.6 %
  • Palmitic acid 15.9 %
  • Stearic acid 8.7 %
  • Oleic acid 39.5 %
  • Linoleic acid 10.1 %
  • α-Linolenic acid 3.2 %
  • Other 7.8 %

Saturated : unsaturated 46 : 54

Hardness 43 29–54
Cleansing 18 12–22
Conditioning 53 44–69
Bubbly lather 18 14–46
Creamy lather 25 16–48

Computed from the fatty acids of the fats above. The bands are what the craft has settled on, not chemistry — a bar outside one is not wrong.

Try it differently

11 variations

The same soap with one thing moved. Each opens in the calculator ready to change again.

From the guides

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Advanced 13 min read

Dreaded orange spots (DOS) and rancid soap

What the orange spots on handmade soap are, why polyunsaturated oils, old fats and trace metals cause them, and which additives the tests show actually help.
Advanced 15 min read

Antioxidants and chelators: keeping soap from going off

What rosemary extract, vitamin E, BHT, EDTA and sodium citrate do in soap, the doses in our database, and how much evidence stands behind each one.
Intermediate 10 min read

Lard and tallow: soaping with animal fats

Why lard and tallow make hard, mild, creamy soap, how to render and store them at home, how beef, mutton and pork fat differ, and classic recipes.

Guides with this recipe

Where these proportions come from

Our own formulation from three of the cheapest fats in most supermarkets: half lard for a hard, creamy bar, a quarter coconut oil for lather and a quarter canola oil, kept under a third of the oils because its linoleic and linolenic acids can turn rancid. Tetrasodium EDTA and rosemary extract go in at about the doses Kevin Dunn tested against rancid spots.

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