Vegan soap recipe: cold process soap for beginners

The published ingredient list for Ivory Original Scent Bar Soap opens with sodium tallowate, ahead of the palm and ahead of the water. Sodium tallowate is what you get when tallow is saponified, and tallow is rendered animal fat. The label does not name the animal and the ingredient database does not either. A soapmaker in r/soapmaking reported customers saying they “thought all soap was vegan because you don’t eat it.” That is the gap this vegan soap recipe is here to close.

What follows is a cold process soap recipe sized for a first attempt: one pound of plant oils, no palm, no animal fat, six to eight bars. Every weight, temperature and time on this page is reproduced from a named published source instead of being calculated here, which is what the site’s editorial standards require of anything involving a caustic chemical. I have not adjusted a single number.

Soap is the one thing on this site you do not eat, which is why it sits under Basics. The vegan recipes are indexed separately.

What makes a bar of soap vegan

The FDA’s own soap page states the chemistry without decoration: “Ordinary soap is made by combining fats or oils and an alkali, such as lye,” and the reaction converts them into “alkali salts of fatty acids.” Change the fat and you have changed the soap. Bramble Berry’s glossary gives the reaction its name, saponification, “the chemical reaction that occurs when lye (sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide) combines with oils or fats to create soap and glycerin.”

So the vegan question is a question about the fat and nothing else. The Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetic Guild publishes the list a handcrafter has to keep out, and it runs longer than most people expect: “Gelatin, Lactose, Lard, Mono-and di-glycerides, Shellac, Vitamin D3, Whey Powder, Beeswax, Honey, Lanolin, Emu Oil, Keratin, Musk, Pearls, Tallow, Caviar, Silk, and Cashmere”, plus any colorant made from insects. Lanolin is pulled from sheep’s wool. Beeswax and honey are bee products under the definition the guild borrows from the Vegan Society, which describes veganism as seeking “to exclude…all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.”

One common ingredient tells you nothing at all by itself. Stearic acid, in PETA’s animal ingredients list, is “when animal-derived, a fat from cows, pigs, and sheep, etc.” and “may also be of plant origin, including from cocoa butter and shea butter.” If a commercial bar lists it, the label will not settle the question for you.

Two certification marks exist for handcrafted products if you would rather not read every label: Vegan Action’s Certified Vegan Logo and the Vegan Society’s Vegan Trademark. The guild notes that both “require individual product applications”, so a company carrying the mark on one product has not certified the rest of its shelf. The longer argument for keeping animal products out of a household sits on the why vegan page.

Vegan soap ingredients that replace animal fat

Four plant oils, distilled water and sodium hydroxide. That is the entire shopping list. The blend below is Tanya Anderson’s from Lovely Greens, and by weight of the oils it runs 50 percent olive oil, 25 percent refined coconut oil, 20 percent refined shea butter and 5 percent castor oil.

Working soapmakers argue about those percentages, and it is worth knowing which way they lean. On the Soapmaking Forum, lsg told a beginner with a palm free vegan recipe that it was “fairly high in oleic acid, which means it probably won’t be a long-lasting bar”, and earlene suggested moving toward avocado and rice bran to “increase palmitic & stearic while decreasing lauric & myristic”. penelopejane caps coconut at 10 percent and cures for twelve weeks. On Reddit, ResultLeft9600 calls shea butter “probably the biggest culprit” behind a batter that thickens too fast, and keeps it under 10 percent. babywoovie ties sticky bars to castor oil, and insincere_platitudes gives the standard reason for the small amount: “Castor oil can cause a sticky feeling in the soap. That’s one reason it’s often used at 5%.”

None of that makes the published recipe wrong. It means one maker’s tested trade-offs are what you are copying, and after three or four batches you will have opinions of your own about them.

Two rules do not bend. Everything is weighed rather than measured by volume, and Soap Queen is blunt that soap equipment should be “exclusive” and never return to food use. The second rule is distilled water. A first-batch poster in 2026 used bottled spring water, got an unexplained pink ring through the loaf, then read the label mid-thread and found “it could contain 0.5% calcium chloride and sodium bicarbonate. Woof…”. bstaruk’s reply covers it: “Always distilled water.”

Lye safety before you open the jug

Sodium hydroxide is the only genuinely dangerous thing in this recipe, and it deserves the whole section. CDC NIOSH lists its trade names as “Caustic soda, Lye [Sodium hydroxide], Soda lye, Sodium hydrate”, its exposure routes as “inhalation, ingestion, skin and/or eye contact”, and its target organs as “Eyes, skin, respiratory system”. CDC ATSDR explains why it burns rather than stings: “Direct contact with the solid or with concentrated solutions causes thermal and chemical burns leading to deep-tissue injuries”, and very strong solutions “can hydrolyze proteins in the eyes, leading to severe burns and eye damage or, in extreme cases, blindness.”

Two things about the chemical catch people out. It gives you no warning by smell, and ATSDR says so directly: sodium hydroxide is “odorless; thus, odor provides no warning of hazardous concentrations.” And dissolving it is an energetic reaction in its own right. ATSDR again: “When the solid is in contact with water, it may generate sufficient heat to ignite combustible materials.” No source I read published a verified peak temperature for a home batch, so treat the container of fresh lye water as hot and leave it where nothing can knock it over until it cools.

Containers matter more than most tutorials let on, and the published guidance conflicts. Soap Queen lists “heat-safe glass, plastic, or stainless steel bowls.” DeeAnna Weed at Classic Bells is stricter: “Do not use glass containers for mixing or storing lye solution. NaOH or KOH will etch and weaken glass, leaving the container prone to unexpected breakage.” Forum members supply the specifics behind that. Zing, on the Soapmaking Forum: “One session, I pulled out the thermometer and it shattered into a thousand pieces in my hand.” I would follow the stricter position, because the cost of being wrong is a broken container of caustic solution. Classic Bells says HDPE (#2) and PP (#5) plastics “have excellent resistance to lye up to the maximum 50% concentration”, while PET or PETG (#1) “breaks down rapidly when exposed to alkali. The plastic turns progressively cloudy, becomes brittle, and eventually cracks and leaks.” Aluminum is ruled out by both sources: it “literally dissolves and releases explosive hydrogen gas.”

Store the jug the way the guild describes, “someplace that is not easily accessible, such as a locked cabinet or storage area”, in “a rigid container, seal it tightly and clearly label the container.” Keep the gear on until the batter is in the mold, because the batter is still caustic. The Elly’s Everyday channel repeats the same warning in every video description: lyes and “raw soap batter, are highly corrosive and require careful and attentive handling and the proper use of personal protective equipment.”

None of which means you should be frightened of it. A Reddit regular, flanjoy, pushed back on the panic in the other direction: “Lye is not ‘some sketchy chemical.’… If you use PPE and are careful it’s perfectly safe to use for soap”. Respect the chemical, wear the goggles, do not be theatrical about it.

The cold process soap recipe

This is Tanya Anderson’s eco-friendly cold process soap recipe from Lovely Greens, reproduced exactly as she published it. A lye weight is not a thing to eyeball or round. The recipe is palm free, vegan, 5 percent superfat, and it yields six to eight bars from one pound of oils.

How to make vegan soap step by step

The card is the short version. The rest of this section is what actually goes wrong at each step, and where the published sources disagree with each other about it.

Weighing and mixing the lye solution

Set the water container on the scale and weigh the water, then weigh the sodium hydroxide into a separate container. Keeping them apart until the moment they meet is what stops a slip of the hand doubling a dose.

Lehman’s sets its version of the rule in bold, “ALWAYS mix lye into water, NEVER water into lye!”, and tells readers to mix outdoors, which is the easiest ventilation you will ever arrange. Practical Self Reliance lists the rest of the setup the same way every published source does: goggles rather than glasses, rubber gloves, long sleeves, a well ventilated area, children and pets out of the room, and heat resistant plastic or stainless steel with no aluminum anywhere near it.

Published soaping temperatures disagree

This is the point where four reputable sources give four answers. Soap Queen’s temperature guide says “the preferred temperature of soaping lye and oils are 120-130 ° F”. Its beginner recipe says “130°F or below (and are ideally within 10 degrees of each other).” Lovely Greens, the recipe on this page, says 95 to 100 F. And for a batter you want to work slowly, Soap Queen suggests “around 100-120° F”.

They are not all describing the same recipe, which is the resolution. Follow the temperature published with the recipe you are actually making, because that is the temperature it was tested at. What everyone agrees on is what happens at the extremes. Too hot and “it can cause the saponification process to speed up dramatically”, with overheating producing alien brains, glycerin rivers or a volcano out of the mold. Too cold and the lye solution “can solidify the oils and butters upon contact.”

Trace in three published wordings

Trace is the moment the oils and lye water have emulsified and the batter will hold a mark. Nobody describes it the same way twice. Soap Queen’s beginner guide says thin trace shows “no streaks of oil and the soap will be the consistency of thin cake batter”. Its own recipe calls medium trace “thick enough to support the trailings and drops on the surface”. Lehman’s says the blender leaves a trace across the surface and “It’s a little like pudding.” Lovely Greens, again the recipe here, wants a batter that “leaves a distinguishable trail on the surface” at a consistency “like thin custard”.

ResultLeft9600’s point about shea butter matters here, because a batter carrying 20 percent shea can reach trace faster than you expect. Soap Queen’s advice for slowing a batter down is to soap cooler and to use the stick blender less: “Using the stick blender accelerates soap, because it speeds up the emulsification process.”

Unmolding times run 18 hours to 4 days

Published unmolding times for beginner recipes spread across that whole range, and the spread is caused by the recipe rather than by the calendar. Elly’s Everyday unmolds at “approximately 18 hours”. Lovely Greens says 48 hours. Soap Queen says “3-4 days”. Lehman’s says 24 hours. A 100 percent olive oil bar made without a water discount or sodium lactate “can take up to 2 weeks to remove from the mold.”

The best test in any of the sources came from the forums, and two people arrived at it independently. akseattle: “The soap should be like a firm cheddar cheese.” Puzzled_Tinkerer, on Reddit, was more precise about it: the soap should “yield to a gentle finger press without making a permanent dent, something like refrigerator cold colby or mild cheddar cheese”. Press the top of the loaf. If it dents and stays dented, give it another day.

Curing and storing the bars

Curing is where beginners lose patience and where the bar is actually made. Lovely Greens reports that “Up to 99% of saponification is complete” within 48 hours, but that during the cure “your bars can lose over half of the water they originally contained.” Bramble Berry defines the cure as “The 4-6 week waiting period after unmolding when water evaporates from cold process bars, making them harder, milder, and longer-lasting”, and draws a distinction worth holding on to: soap “is safe to use after saponification completes (48-72 hours) but won’t be at best quality until fully cured.” The recipe on this page sets 28 days as its floor.

Longer is better and the community is emphatic about it, particularly for olive heavy bars like this one. Darkdirtyalfa, on a 60 percent olive oil recipe: “At 60% olive oil i would cure this soap for a few months. Not weeks.” Btldtaatw put it more generally: “Every recipe benefits with a longer cure time.”

The conditions are simple and the one mistake is common. Lovely Greens says the cure “needs an airy place out of direct sunlight”, to “Space your bars out so that there is plenty of airflow”, and to line surfaces with “greaseproof or baking paper”. Never cure in a sealed container, because “the natural glycerin in soap attracts moisture to it.” Stand the bars on edge with gaps between them and write the batch name and date on a strip of tape along the front of the rack. Once cured, Soap Queen recommends storing finished products “in a dark, cool and dry place”.

Troubleshooting a first batch

The pattern across every first-batch thread on Reddit and the Soapmaking Forum is that beginners fear the lye and then get tripped by something cosmetic. A poster called RBS put up a photo of what they took for a ruined loaf and were told: “Those look like glycerine rivers which are purely cosmetic.”

Soda ash is the most common one. Soap Queen explains that it “forms when unsaponified lye reacts with naturally-occurring carbon dioxide in the air”, leaving “an uneven, white, ashy film on the bars”, usually within one to three days. “It doesn’t affect the final bars and the soap is safe to use.” The published prevention levers are all small adjustments:

• Soap warmer. “Make sure your lye and oils are 100°F or higher. We like to soap around 115-120°F.”
• Pour later, “when it’s closer to medium trace”.
• Spray the top with 99 percent isopropyl alcohol right away, then again in 10 to 15 minutes.
• Cover the mold with a piece of cardboard and then a towel or blanket.
• Take a 5 to 10 percent water discount, or drop the superfat to 2 to 4 percent.

Soft or soggy bars usually come from not enough lye, not enough hard oils, or too much water, and sodium lactate in the lye water is the standard fix. Crumbly bars point the other way, toward too much lye or a batch soaped too cool, and the fix is to soap at 120 F or above. Ricing and seizing are the fragrance oil’s doing rather than yours: ricing comes from fragrance ingredients binding with hard oil components and can be blended out, while seizing has “No way to reverse”. The glycerin rivers in that first photo come from glycerin getting too hot and congealing, and reducing the water or preventing gel phase is what stops them.

Orange spots turning up weeks later are a different problem. Soap Queen calls them dreaded orange spots, says soap that has them “is safe to use, but it is a cosmetic issue and may develop an unpleasant odor”, and names rancid oils as the most common cause. Prevention is fresh oils from a reputable supplier, refrigerating or freezing oils you will not get through quickly, distilled water only, and no superfat above 5 percent.

Two published experts disagree about the zap test

If you want to know whether a batch went lye heavy, both of the available methods have a credible source arguing against them. Here is each position with its own warning attached.

DeeAnna Weed at Classic Bells defends the zap test as “a quick, low cost, and acceptably accurate alternative”, describes it as touching a dampened fingertip that was swiped on the soap to your tongue, and says a zap “is not a taste; it is a sensation like a static shock that is unmistakable and immediate.” Her own warning is in capitals: “DO NOT LICK SOAP DIRECTLY! You run the risk of a serious chemical burn to your tongue if your soap is even slightly lye heavy.”

Kenna Cote at Modern Soap Making refuses the method outright: “If a new soapmaker comes across this advice and has not yet familiarized themselves with the appearance of lye heavy soap, tongue testing could result in serious injury.” Her position on the alternative is no kinder. Soap “interferes with the indicator dyes used to manufacture the strips, which can throw the reading off by several points”, with strips returning readings “varying from a pH of 5 to a pH of 9”. The rigorous version follows ASTM D1172: a 1 percent soap solution in distilled water, tested at 40 C, read with a pH meter or universal indicator.

Because published pH ranges for handmade soap genuinely conflict, no single number on a strip is a pass or fail for your bar. If a batch looks or behaves wrong, the safest route is to set it aside and ask an experienced soapmaker before you put it on skin.

Palm oil in a vegan recipe

Palm oil is a plant oil, so it clears the vegan boundary on ingredients alone, and it is still the sharpest argument inside this audience. The Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetic Guild frames the objection accurately: “While palm derives from plants, ethical sourcing concerns exist due to destructive harvesting practices affecting animal habitats.” The certification answer is RSPO, which states that its certification “assures individuals that RSPO Members who produce or physically handle RSPO Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) have obtained RSPO Certification” through “a systematic annual audit process” against its published standards.

Soapmakers split on it and all four positions are held by people who make soap for a living. helikophis will not touch it: “As a person involved in Indonesian arts and with many Indonesian friends, I have never used it and never will. It has been an incredible disaster, both social and ecological, for their country.” fredbpilkington buys certified and is honest about the limits: “I always buy the (very marginally more expensive) RSPO sustainably sourced palm oil… Is the certification perfect? No.” scythematter argues you do not need it at all, since “If you balance your fatty acid profile by using a variety of oils/butters, you will get as good if not better cp soap than cp soap with palm oil.” cauldron3 says the opposite from experience: “I’ve tried almost every combination of fats/oils I can think of and nothing truly replaces palm.”

Worth knowing before you copy the most-linked beginner recipe on the English web: Soap Queen’s “Back to Basics” cold process soap is 32 percent palm oil. It is a good recipe and it will not suit a reader who came here to avoid palm. The recipe on this page is palm free because a tested palm free option exists and I chose it. The argument itself is still open.

Frequently asked questions

Can I make vegan soap without lye?

Not from scratch. Bramble Berry’s glossary describes melt and pour as a base you melt, color, scent and pour, aimed at makers “who want to avoid working with lye”, with no cure time because it “is safe to use as soon as it hardens”. The lye reaction has already happened at the factory. Check the base’s ingredient list before you buy, because bases in the same supplier ranges include goat milk. A Reddit regular, Btldtaatw, put the from-scratch version simply: “to make soap, actual soap, you need 3 things: an oil or fat, water and lye.”

Is there any lye left in a finished bar?

Elly’s Everyday answers this with a condition attached, and the condition matters: “If the soap is made correctly with the right lye amount, all of the lye should be consumed during the saponification reaction” and “if the recipe is formulated and made correctly, there should be no unused lye left in the soap.” That is why the lye calculator step is not optional and why a batch that behaves strangely gets set aside rather than used.

Is castile soap vegan?

Castile soap is cold process soap made with 100 percent olive oil, a style Soap Queen traces to the Castile region of Spain, so by ingredients it is plant only. Expect a long wait. All-olive batter “takes quite a while to come to trace”, and “Some soapers prefer to allow Castile soap to cure for up to 6 months to a year!”

How much essential oil can I add to soap?

Soap Queen, documenting the Bramble Berry fragrance calculator, publishes 0.7 ounces per pound of cold process soap for both essential oils and fragrance oils, and gives 0.8 ounces per pound as the level for a strong scent. One distinction the suppliers make and most tutorials skip: IFRA and RIFM standards govern fragrance oils, and there is no official IFRA usage rate for essential oils, so those numbers come from a supplier’s own testing. Citrus essential oils and coconut scents are named as the ones that fade in cold process, and the published fix is anchoring them with a deeper scent such as patchouli.

How long do handmade soap bars last?

Soap Queen’s answer is that the pH of cold process soap “does not allow mold or bacteria to grow”, so “the shelf life of cold process soap is essentially until the soap starts showing DOS.” That makes storage the variable you control: dark, cool, dry, with air around the bars. Rancidity and mold growth are separate problems and a bar that develops orange spots has not grown mold.

Sources

• CDC NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards, sodium hydroxide. www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0565.html
• CDC ATSDR Medical Management Guidelines, sodium hydroxide. wwwn.cdc.gov/TSP/MMG/MMGDetails.aspx?mmgid=246&toxid=45
• MedlinePlus, sodium hydroxide poisoning. medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002487.htm
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Frequently Asked Questions on Soap. www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetic-products/frequently-asked-questions-soap
• Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetic Guild, Lye Safety. www.soapguild.org/tools-and-resources/resource-center/202/lye-safety
• Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetic Guild, A Beginners Guide to Vegan Products. www.soapguild.org/tools-and-resources/resource-center/80/vegan-products-for-beginners
• Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetic Guild, Lye Calculator. www.soapguild.org/tools-and-resources/product-price-calculators/lye
• Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, Certification. rspo.org/as-an-organisation/certification
• Lovely Greens, Eco-Friendly Cold Process Soap Recipe. lovelygreens.com/eco-friendly-cold-process-soap-recipe-instructions
• Lovely Greens, How to Cure Handmade Soap. lovelygreens.com/how-to-cure-handmade-soap
• Classic Bells, Containers for lye solution. classicbells.com/soap/lyeStorage.asp
• Classic Bells, Zap test. classicbells.com/soap/zapTest.asp
• Modern Soap Making, How to pH Test Soap the Right Way. www.modernsoapmaking.com/blog/how-to-ph-test-handmade-soap
• Elly’s Everyday, Soap Making FAQs. www.ellyseveryday.com/soap-making-faqs
• SoapCalc, how to use the calculator. soapcalc.net/helptext
• Soap Queen, Back to Basics: Simple and Gentle Cold Process Soap. soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/cold-process-soap/back-to-basics-simple-gentle-cold-process-soap
• Soap Queen, Free Beginner’s Guide to Soapmaking: Cold Process. soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/cold-process-soap/free-beginners-guide-to-soapmaking-cold-process
• Soap Queen, Back to Basics: How Temperature Affects Cold Process Soap. soapqueen.com/magicpod/back-basics-temperature-affects-cold-process-soap
• Soap Queen, Explaining and Preventing Soda Ash. soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/explaining-and-preventing-soda-ash
• Soap Queen, Soapy Mess-Up Quick Guide. soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/soapy-mess-quick-guide
• Soap Queen, Troubleshooting Lye Heavy Soap. soapqueen.com/magicpod/troubleshooting-lye-heavy-soap-2
• Soap Queen, Dealing with Dreaded Orange Spots. soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/dreaded-orange-spots
• Soap Queen, Shelf Life of Bath Products and Ingredients. soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/shelf-life-bath-products-ingredients-rancidity-vs-mold
• Soap Queen, Simple Castile Cold Process Soap Tutorial. soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/castile-cold-process-soap-tutorial
• Soap Queen, How to Prevent Scent Fading in Soap. soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/how-to-prevent-scent-fading-in-soap
• Soap Queen, Using the Bramble Berry Fragrance Calculator. soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/use-fragrance-calculator
• Soap Queen, How to Soap with Accelerating Fragrance Oils. soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/how-to-work-with-accelerating-fragrance-oils
• Bramble Berry glossary, Saponification. glossary.brambleberry.com/glossary/saponification
• Bramble Berry glossary, Curing (Cure Time). glossary.brambleberry.com/glossary/curing-cure-time
• Bramble Berry glossary, Melt and Pour Soap. glossary.brambleberry.com/glossary/melt-and-pour-soap-mp-soap
• Practical Self Reliance, Beginner Soapmaking Recipe. practicalselfreliance.com/beginner-soapmaking-recipe
• Lehman’s, DIY: How To Make Cold Process Soap, Step By Step. www.lehmans.com/blogs/news/diy-how-to-make-cold-process-soap-step-by-step
• Incidecoder, Ivory Original Scent Bar Soap ingredients. inkeedecoder.com/products/ivory-original-scent-bar-soap
• PETA, Animal-Derived Ingredients List. www.peta.org/living/food/animal-ingredients-list