On Thursday I changed out the oil in my deep fryer and in the process filled up one of my used-oil bottles. This presented me with a bit of a problem: what to do with the foul stuff. It seems wrong to just cast it into the dustbin, and I’ve only so many cast iron kitchen utensils to season.
Someone suggested that I burn it in a lamp, and I’ve recently bid on and won a very nice piece, but a lamp only uses up oil so quickly. Someone else suggested that I make soap from it, and another posted a procedure meant to strip much of the reek from oil. So I tried it, and now have a pie-plate’s worth of new soap curing. I seasoned it with hyssop, ginger, cardamom, clove & cinnamon in the hopes of covering the lard and used-corn-oil smell, decreased though that might have been by the washing procedure (it involves boiling with water, salt and baking soda). I also added a bit of olive oil, but that’s not an offensive smell. They soap-cakes don’t seem to smell like anything other than soap, so it seems to have worked.
