Cooked homemade lye soap

1 Servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
10½ pounds Rendered fat
Crackerns; rancid lard or
Mutton tallow
3 Buckets of soft; (14 qt.)
Water; cold
3 cans Lye

Directions

To make the soap, take the crackerns or grease make sure it is salt free.

Add 1 bucket of water. Mix up together in a large wash tub or kettle, about a 25 gallon size. Place over a hot fire, be sure and add the 3 cans of lye before the mixture gets too warm. As when the lye is added, it will bubble up. Have a stick, 3 feet long to stir with. Keep stirring until all crackerns are cooked up. Then slowly add the remaining buckets of water.

The cooking should be done outside, and watched very closely as if the fire gets too hot, it will boil over. If that should happen have about 1 quart of cold water handy. Use about a cup of it, pour into the cooking soap and stir. That will take the boiling down. Remove some of wood under the kettle so it won't be so hot. The mixture should string from the stick when you hold it up or place a few drops on a dish and if it sets up, your soap is done. Let it cool a little, then dip it out of the tub and put in either earthen, glass or enamel containers as the lye with harm anything that is metal or tin. Let set overnight, then cut into bars. Be sure and weigh your empty bucket first, as most buckets, that hold 10½ pounds of crackerns will weigh about 2 pounds. So with the weight of the bucket and crackerns, should be 12 ½ pounds. Always make soap in the New Moon and in warm weather as it takes the soap bars about 3 weeks to dry and they shouldn't freeze.

NOTES : Notes

Posted to recipelu-digest Volume 01 Number 241 by "Diane Geary" <diane@...> on Nov 10, 1997

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