Soap Recipe Using 3 Grocery Store Oils

Making homemade soap is fun and rewarding for me, however I don’t always have the time or money to shop for a long list of specialty oils. This is when a simple trip to the grocery store will suffice. You can make some very fine soap with oils found in most every grocery store.

The most difficult-to-find ingredients in this soap are the fragrance oil, which I usually find online, and the lye, which you can get at most hardware stores, but you may have to ask for it because lye is often kept in the back of the store due to its caustic nature.

This recipe uses three common oils: coconut oil (my favorite oil of all), Crisco, and olive oil. This is one of my favorite soap recipes because it uses common oils that can be easily found, and it achieves an awesome balance of key soap qualities including INS (“a measure of the physical qualities of the soap based on the SAP and iodine value” according to SoapCalc, and which some soap makers find very useful for recipes), hardness, conditioning, bubbliness, creaminess, and cleanliness.

Three Oil Soap Recipe

Ingredients:

• 11.4 oz. water
• 4.4 oz. lye
• 12 oz coconut oil
• 12 oz. new Crisco with palm
• 6 oz. olive oil
• 4 oz. fragrance oil

I used mint fragrance and mint tea for a little texture in mine (pictured above).

Directions:

1. Slowly add the lye to the water.NOTE: it is very important that you follow safety precautions while handling lye!  Never add the water to the lye, always the other way around because lye is very caustic!  Also wear gloves, goggles, and a mask while handling lye because if the mixture touches the skin it will burn and the mixture releases fumes.
2. Melt all three oils and mix them with a hand mixer or KitchenAid, which is what I use.
3. Slowly add the lye to the oil mixture while stirring.
4. Add the fragrance oil to the mixture.
5. Mix all ingredients with a hand mixer or KitchenAid until the soap mixture has a nice trace.  “Trace” refers to the thickness of the mixture and once the mixture looks thick like pudding and is mixed well, with no shiny oil spots, then trace has been achieved.
6. Pour the mixture into a soap mold.  My favorite is the Bramble Berry silicone mold.
7. Allow at least 24 hours for the soap to harden.
8. Once hardened, cut the soap and allow another day or so for the soap to continue to harden and dry.

Once complete, enjoy!