Would you shave if you knew soap was made with deep fryer oil used by restaurants?
If yes, how much would you pay for such soap?
If yes, how much would you pay for such soap?
Soap from Recycled Cooking Oil (Deep Fryer)?
- Thread starter naughtilus
- Start date
If the soap held up quality wise, then really I can't see why anyone would be concerned about the source of the oil used. As for price, I wouldn't expect it to come in that much cheaper. Sure, the oil is going to be a lot less in cost, but there's additional labor involved to use it that would bring the cost most likely back to where it would be by buying oils/fat to use in the process.
My thoughts would be that there are lot of free radicals in the used oils, so the soap may be pre rancidified if you will.
My chemistry is not great, so for all I know the soap making process may make my point mute. Maybe a comment from @RayClem
My chemistry is not great, so for all I know the soap making process may make my point mute. Maybe a comment from @RayClem
Used fryer oils are best left to the diesel fuel crowd.
The problem with used fryer oil is that the recyclers pick up used oil from a variety of restaurants. Thus, the recycled oil is a mixture of various oils: corn oil; canola/rapeseed oil, olive oil, safflower oil, cottonseed oil, sunflower oil, soybean oil, etc. In order to be useful, the oil would have to be fractionated into its component fatty acids: stearic acid, palmitic acid, oleic acid, lauric acid, etc. Those fatty acids may very well be purchased by soapmakers for use in making what we call "vegan" soaps, but there is no guarantee that the fatty acids came from a vegan source. I suspect these fats are used by many of the commercial soapmakers for making cheap bath soaps and detergents.
Yet another reason to avoid buying anything from that kook.
Used fryer oil works fine to make soap if you use the proper anti-oxidants in it (citric acid and BHT). Without the anti-oxidants it will go rancid fairly quickly. It also won't make good shaving soap, it doesn't have anywhere near enough stearic acid in it, so would have to have something like soy wax in a large percentage to make passable shaving soap. Bath soap is fine.
I made a batch, worked great once it hardened up (like Castile soap, it takes a while to mature properly), and it was great soap. Six months later, without any BHT, it was turning yellow, then orange and eventually got stinky. Later soaps with preservative have lasted a couple years now without issue.
It is kind of a stab in the dark for saponification values though, hard to tell just what's in it. Fortunately, if you leave a decent superfat percentage it won't matter.
I made a batch, worked great once it hardened up (like Castile soap, it takes a while to mature properly), and it was great soap. Six months later, without any BHT, it was turning yellow, then orange and eventually got stinky. Later soaps with preservative have lasted a couple years now without issue.
It is kind of a stab in the dark for saponification values though, hard to tell just what's in it. Fortunately, if you leave a decent superfat percentage it won't matter.
+3! Definitely! I don’t understand how one could assure consistent quality without contaminants.
When I worked fast food twenty some years ago there was a special dumpster for the used oil and grease from the grill. It was huge and probably took a month or more to fill one of the worst smells you could imagine. When I asked why the saved it I was told it was sold to make soap, I couldn't believe it. But then again ambergris comes from whale vomit and poop that washes up on shore, and has been used for expensive perfumes and even food for centuries.
It's cleaned up quite a bit before it's used to make soap. Easier to render solid fats as they harden at fridge temps, but the principle is the same -- contact with steam or very hot water will extract free fatty acids and all the color and odor from the oil. My soap had a faint hint of doughnuts.
Mmmmm ... bacon!
- Thread starter
- #13
Seems like a level headed guy to me.
How do I know some soap maker doesn't use recycled vegetable cooking oil, but isn't disclosing this practice?
- Thread starter
- #14
Mmmmm ... bacon!
I'd lick that. I'm not even kidding.
- Thread starter
- #15
Is your name Tyler Durden by any chance?
I suspect many of the bath soaps you purchase are made from recycled cooking oils. That is how they can sell them for less than $1 a bar. Perhaps some cheap shaving soaps are made that way as well, but I won't sugggest any names. However, any artisan trying to extract $15 and up from a customer for a tub of soap would quickly lose customers due to variability of their product should they use recycled oils. They just are not consistent enough in fatty acid content to make a soap that is consistent in quality from batch to batch.
- Thread starter
- #17
When I think about it, this is a good practice to provide incentive for restaurants to change cooking oils more frequently before it becomes burnt and carcinogenic.
Pretty harsh. Do you know Jon? have you had some kind of bad experience with his soaps? lots of folks seem to like them so I'm not sure why the slam on him.
No, not even in some post-apocalyptic world.
Beard'll be fine.
AA
Beard'll be fine.
AA
If you remove everything that isn’t oil first, it should be fine I would think.
