The Secret to Making Soap in a Slow Cooker

By garciamoss

To start a good batch of crock pot soap, you don’t need to do anything special. That’s right, you can use any recipe for cold process soap. In case you missed it, here it is:

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup cool water – use distilled or filtered water
• 1/4 cup lye – also called 100% sodium hydroxide
• 2/3 cup olive oil
• 2/3 cup coconut oil
• 2/3 cup other liquid oil such as grapeseed, almond, sunflower, or safflower oil

Details

Adapted from diynatural.com

Preparation

Step 1

Pour the water into a quart canning jar. Slowly add the lye and stir until dissolved. Remember to use gloves and a mask if you like. The fumes that come from the lye will stop in a minute or so.
Next, measure your oils and place them in the crock pot. Be sure to measure them at a liquid state, not solid. Many crock pots only have heating elements on the sides and not on the bottom, so you may need to double or triple this recipe to fill the slow cooker a little more. When the oils are hot (you can start on high to get it going, but then switch to low) you can add the lye. That’s right, I didn’t tell you what temperature they should be, because it really doesn’t matter with this process. If the oils are hot, the lye will be too and you’re going to cook it anyway.
Once you get the lye and oil mixed together, stir by hand for 5 minutes. I honestly believe that this is very important as it brings all of the lye in contact with all of the oil. After 5 minutes, then use a stick blender to bring it to a light trace. Remember, when you make cold process soap, you want to bring it to a medium trace, looking much like thick vanilla pudding. A light trace is more like pancake batter. Thick, but not like pudding.
Once it gets to a light trace, cover it and walk away. DON’T stir it! This was just about the hardest thing for me since I worry about it sticking. It won’t. After about 20 minutes, sometimes sooner, you’ll see some bubbling on the sides. Then it will start to boil (sort of) and turn translucent, almost like petroleum jelly. After approximately another 20 minutes, it will expand more and start to curl in on itself. You still don’t want to stir it yet. When it’s all translucent and has folded in enough to fill in the middle, then it’s done for now.