Making Buffalo Soap
No, silly! Not a soap to wash your buffalo. It's soap made from buffalo. That's right....from buffalos.
Back in the day when people made their own soaps, they created it from animal fat or more accurately, suet. Suet is the hard fat that is typically found around the internal organs. When suet is rendered down it's called tallow or lard. Soap was made from whatever suet they could get their hands on. The suet from swine renders down in what's called lard and what comes from beef, deer and buffalo is called tallow.
Despite some people's negative connotation of rubbing animal fat on your body, tallow and lard soaps are excellent fats to use in soaps. Low pore clogging and hard, long lasting white bar of soap. What not to love?
Want to know something else?! Ivory brand of soap also contains tallow. (Sodium Tallowate) Bet you didn't know that!
Twice a year my husband Scott and I participate in a pioneer reenactment at a historically correct Stockade.
Click here to go the Forest City Stockade Website.
The rebuilding of the Forest City Stockade was done totally by volunteers who pride themselves on their attention to detail and more importantly, historical accuracy. When improvements or additions are considered for the Stockade the first questions asked are how did the pioneers do it or create it and is it appropriate and correct for the time period?
While at the Stockade I give talks to the visitors about how pioneers made their soaps. I would also give away small samples of lard soaps to bring home and try.
No, silly! Not a soap to wash your buffalo. It's soap made from buffalo. That's right....from buffalos.
Back in the day when people made their own soaps, they created it from animal fat or more accurately, suet. Suet is the hard fat that is typically found around the internal organs. When suet is rendered down it's called tallow or lard. Soap was made from whatever suet they could get their hands on. The suet from swine renders down in what's called lard and what comes from beef, deer and buffalo is called tallow.
Despite some people's negative connotation of rubbing animal fat on your body, tallow and lard soaps are excellent fats to use in soaps. Low pore clogging and hard, long lasting white bar of soap. What not to love?
Want to know something else?! Ivory brand of soap also contains tallow. (Sodium Tallowate) Bet you didn't know that!
Twice a year my husband Scott and I participate in a pioneer reenactment at a historically correct Stockade.
Click here to go the Forest City Stockade Website.
The rebuilding of the Forest City Stockade was done totally by volunteers who pride themselves on their attention to detail and more importantly, historical accuracy. When improvements or additions are considered for the Stockade the first questions asked are how did the pioneers do it or create it and is it appropriate and correct for the time period?
While at the Stockade I give talks to the visitors about how pioneers made their soaps. I would also give away small samples of lard soaps to bring home and try.
Which leads to me WHY in the world I decided to get some buffalo fat. Believe it or not our local meat market processes farm raised buffalo quite often. So it was fairly easy to obtain and cheap. Like really cheap...$1.90 for about 5 lbs. So why not?
It comes in a large chunk of suet like this. First thing that needs to happen is it needs to get chopped into smaller pieces so I can render it down.
It comes in a large chunk of suet like this. First thing that needs to happen is it needs to get chopped into smaller pieces so I can render it down.
Into the cook pot they go. The chunks get cooked to reduce the fat out of them over low and slow heat.
As the pieces are cooked down they become "cracklin's". A delicacy for some folks. I don't know...I suppose they could be tasty to some people. After all what's bacon but fried fat?
But I wasn't adventurous enough to try them. Although the cats in the barn sure loved them.
What is strained out of the whole mess was about 1 inch of glorious fat at the bottom of a trusty, well used cake pan.
And wal-la! My first trial batch. I used about 16 ounces of the tallow and made it into a test batch. I kept it simple and just used lye, distilled water and the buffalo tallow and kept it fragrance free.
After it did its soaping *magic* overnight what comes out is soap! Yah! I made buffalo soap. I typically cure my soaps for 6 weeks before using them. But of course I couldn't wait to just try it a little bit. It lathered quite nicely. At this point it still had little bit of a meaty smell but that's a common occurrence with tallow soaps. It should cure out and smell like...well, soap. ☺
Wanna try some of this fabulous buffalo soap? For free? Well you're just going to have to make plans to be out at the Forest City Stockade on Dec. 1 and find me in the General Store. ☺ And your wish will come true!
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