Fryer Oil Soap

As if frying food in F A T isn't shameful enough, after a few uses you're left more than a couple of dollars out of pocket and with litres and litres of oil to dispose of. Oil being one of the worst pollutants of land and water - one litre of oil will contaminate over one million litres of water - it's essential to dispose of it properly, or to recycle it into something useful again. So what about soap? That uses oil, but - does anyone really want to 'wash' themselves with fish and chip fragrance? Hmm.

So I tried it out as an experiment, and reasoned that if it smelled strange, it could become an 'outside' soap to wash off greasy boy hands and muddy child feet. Well knock me down, there is no aroma reminiscent of a dodgy fish & chip shop, and the lemon essential oil held it's scent really well.

The oil I use for frying is a canola blend, so I added some coconut oil (copha) to harden the soap. I filtered the oil through a couple of layers of paper towel. The 'water' component was made with a lemongrass tea, and the lemongrass added back into the soap at the end as an exfoliant. I used organic lemon essential oil at a 3% concentration.

So if you're a fellow fat fryer and would like to give it a go - here is the recipe!

Lemony Lemongrass Soap
2900g canola oil
750g copha
500g caustic soda (sodium hydroxide)
1000g water (or tea)
100g lemon essential oil

The instructions for making the soap are in this soap tutorial. The water/tea in this recipe takes the place of the milk. For information on caustic soda/sodium hydroxide/lye check out the post on it here. Happy soaping!