The product that we make at trace soap is only as good as its ingredients. All of our ingredients have been carefully chosen to prioritize the health of our customers, ensure the functionality of our products, and honor our planet. The goal of this blog series is to allow customers to peek behind the curtain and gain a greater understanding of why we use the ingredients we do and allow our customers to ask questions.
For our first ingredient spotlight, I have chosen to write about Tallow. Tallow is, without a doubt, the single most important ingredient in trace bar soap: not only does its use guarantee an exceptional product, it is key to our company sustainability mission.
The use of tallow in soap has been around for as long as soap making has existed. Early soap was made by mixing lye, water, and fat and letting it cure. Back in the day, ashes from a hardwood fire were mixed with low mineral content water (ie. rainwater) to make a lye solution. The lye solution was then mixed with rendered fat, allowed to cure, and Voila! Soap! Any true cold or hot processed soap follows the basic process described above, though, all of our modern amenities have allowed us to substantially complicate the process.
1. Tallow is rendered beef fat (suet) .
In order to make tallow, we have to render suet. Suet is the hard, white, fat of the cow that surrounds the organs. The process of rendering suet boils off water and cooks any beef, allowing it to be filtered. It is incredibly simple, all that is required is to heat the suet on low until the fat is melted and the oil has clarified.
The composition of tallow is approximately 50% saturated fat, 42% monounsaturated fat, and 4% polyunsaturated fat. As a home cooking tool, it has gained popularity in recent years as saturated fats have moved off the naughty foods list and diets like keto and paleo have moved into the spotlight. In commercial kitchens, tallow is commonly used for frying. It’s got a really high smoke point and is perfect for making extra crispy french fries.
2. The tallow used in trace soap is a waste product.
When I was first working through recipe development in 2016, I went to a local meat counter a purchased a couple of pounds of beef suet at a time. It did not take long to realize that in order to meet the demands of my business, I would need to find a supplier that could sell me hundreds of pounds of beef suet at a time.
We’re very lucky that New Mexico and Colorado are home to several small and mid-size ranches that provide high quality beef and pork to our community. Working through our local grocery co-op, I connected with one of the local cattle ranchers and requested to purchase their suet. The rancher then referred me to a small meat processing plant that they used to process their heard. A couple of emails later I was on my way to eastern New Mexico to pick up my first 50 pound lot of beef suet.
I cannot say that I know the precise origin of every cow in our supply chain, but I can say that the beef suet that we use comes from exclusively pastured heards, or from family animals that are individually butchered. These cows have certainly never seen a feed lot.
I am proud to say that our tallow is not, and will never be, a by-product of factory farms. Large commercial meat packing facilities have systems in place to recycle beef suet for a variety of supply chain uses (cooking tallow, biodiesel, lubrication, to name a few), however, the small family meat processor that we work with has no use for the leftover beef suet and it is truly, garbage. Commercial systems to process and clarify beef suet are expensive, and the cost cannot be justified by small family operations. Our partnership with our supplier is genuinely altruistic.
3. Tallow makes an exceptional, long-lasting bar soap.
You know what’s the worst? Using a new bar of soap a couple of times only to discover that its nearly disintegrated in the shower. A bar of trace soap, if left on a tray to drain in the shower, will never feel goopy of slimy. A single 4.5 oz bar being used once a day to shower will typically last about 6 weeks.
So why does some soap disintegrate, while other soap holds up? The short answer is that the fatty acid composition of the oils used to make the soap is crucial. If a soap recipe does not contain enough oils with high saturated fat content, it will be too soft and will result in a sad soap blob in the shower. The two main oils that are used to create a long-lasting bar of soap are palm oil and tallow. Both oils have high saturated fat content, and result in a bar soap with a similar feel.
For ethical reasons, I refuse to use palm oil or its derivatives. Despite the best of intentions, the widespread use of palm oil has resulted in deforestation of some of the oldest growth forests in the world. The biodiverse forests of Malaysia and Indonesia have been ravaged by the palm oil industry. I’ll keep it short for now, but suffice it to say that palm oil has a significant impact on animal habitats and is a source of egregious human rights violations for workers.
Do you have any additional questions about tallow? Actually, take a look at our labels and let me know if you have questions about any of our ingredients. Use the comment section below to suggest an ingredient for our next feature.