Afraid to continue. Should I stop now?

[QuanahRose]

I'm in trouble.

Pictures accompany this post.

The pan contains coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil and shea butter. I put the pan on very low heat to melt the solids (coconut, palm and shea). The only out of the ordinary thing in this process is that the coconut oil was separated. (I posted about that earlier and from the replies understood it was still OK to use.)

The solid oils melted, but there are some sort of particles that are suspended in the melted oils. I've attached pictures that show them on the sides of the pan and in the oil.





I looked at them through a jeweler's loupe and they look like miniscule globules of solid oil. If I put some on a solid surface or between my fingers and press or rub, they disappear. There is nothing solid that you can feel. I let the pan sit for several hours and some of the particles precipitated out. The pictures that shows that.





Any ideas about what is going on and what I should do next -- throw this out or continue with the recipe or strain this or heat it up to a higher temperature to melt the globules -- or something else?

If I continue, I'll be adding kukui, jojoba and wheat germ and am trying to avoid having those go to waste as well.

As always, the benefit of your knowledge and experience is most appreciated.

 

[kbuska]

It sounds like the coconut oil hasn't fully melted yet. Whsts your oil temp?

 

[IrishLass]

There's nothing wrong with the oil. I've had that happen with my CO at times. You just need to heat it at a higher temp to get it to melt more completely.

IrishLass

 

[Bubbles Galore]

Just agreeing that the temp is not high enough to melt the solid oils completely. :wink:

 

[QuanahRose]

THANKS! I'll heat it up.

 

[kbuska]

One thought for next time is to heat your solid oils up first then add your soft oils. This saves quite a bit of time because you don't need to heat up your soft oils. This also keeps your oils temp down so you can get to mixing sooner.

I always start my lye mixture first and then start measuring the oils, melting, etc. I found that by the time I'm ready to go, my lye doesn't have much further to cool.

Just my thoughts,
Ken

 

[QuanahRose]

Makes sense. Since this recipe called for mixing the oils and lye when both were at 80 degrees, I left out most of the soft oils, planning to use them to cool down the melted solids. Guess I just didn't get the temperature on the solids up high enough before taking the pan off the heat. All worked well today when I reheated.

At least it looked good in the pan and going into the molds. We shall see. . .

I've successfully made this recipe before but had difficulty getting the oils and lye to the same temperature, so narrowing the difference between the two makes sense.

My call for help was probably a little quick but I'm gun shy after experiencing the complete failure of a recent effort using a different recipe. I'll be posting that debacle for all to see with the hope of learning from whatever the mistake was in that case.

 

[Lindy]

Patrica I hate to say it but you need to experience a couple of all-out failures because they are going to teach you so much more than a million successes.

Going back to your question, I concur with everyone else that you need to add more heat. I also melt my hard oils first and then add my soft oils.....

 

[Hazel]

I always start my lye mixture first and then start measuring the oils, melting, etc. I found that by the time I'm ready to go, my lye doesn't have much further to cool.

I do the same as Ken.

Lindy brought up a good point about failures teaching us more than successes. I can certainly confirm the validity of her comment.