Thread: Lard vs. Tallow

I have noticed shave soaps advertising tallow as a main ingredient. After several years of soap making I have come to the conclusion that tallow, beef that is, is hard to come by already rendered and bleached. So that has me wondering if their advertising of Tallow is just a way of disguising lard in their recipe. Any thoughts on this subject?

Could be. I can see it being a tough thing to come by for the at home soap maker. However, I would think that a company mass producing soaps like say: Arko, Tabac, RazoRock, and others they would more than likely have a company that processes the fats for them, and they just order from that facility in bulk quantities. With as much beef as Americans consume and process, I wouldn't think it would be hard to come by on a large scale, but for the average person, I could see where it would be a problem. You could check with tanneries, they might have some leads on tallow and lanolin (sheep fat), b/c I am sure they most likely sell these off to processers to sell to cosmetic and soap companies for production purposes. I have noticed though, that I prefer the lanolin, or palm oils over the tallow. Tallow just doesn't seem to work with my hard water, and dries way too quickly; to the point of seeing speckles floating around like little smelly good snowflakes in the bathroom. Just my thoughts.

According to this:
Lard for soapmaking | Lard | Tallow

Lard comes from pip, while tallow comes from cow, sheep and deer.

Lanolin comes from sheep's wool, not sheep fat.

Lard vs tallow. What you may be most concerned with in your choice is the additives that you have in your choice. I've used beef suet to be rendered into tallow for soap. Non processed fat, Easy, renders fairly quickly etc. Lard we're looking at pork fat and most people think of bacon and processed pork fat. Here you need to think about what was added in the processing. My choice would be non processed pork fat., so you didn't have to worry about what had been added.

You can buy Lard already processed but if you look at the label you'll find chemicals that were added to stabilize or preserve it.

Originally Posted by WillN

Lanolin comes from sheep's wool, not sheep fat.

Huh...then I was advised wrong on that; thanks for the clear up.