Burnt oils??

[cascarral]

I was melting cocoa and coconut oil and forgot for a bit and I don't know if I burnt them! the temperature rised up to 100 C (210F), at first I thought I smelled something funny but I'm not sure anymore.

Has anyone burnt oils? How can I know for sure? Should I toss them?

 

[AliOop]

Both of those oils are ok at that heat. Some people intentionally heat them to those temperatures for high temp fluid hot processing (HTFHP). But unless you want your soap to move really, really, fast, it is best to let them cool way down.

Edited: I should add that even HTFHP makers are cautioned to keep the oils below 240F. This is not because the oils are ruined, but because the reaction with the hot lye is too expansive. In other words, you get uncontrollable volcanoes in the cooking pot.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

The oils usually used bulk in soapmaking need a much higher temperature to get damaged.
Think of heat as fast-forward into rancidity. Things happening in months happen in hours. Safflower, hemp or flaxseed oil would have been very unhappy about that treatment, but cocoa butter and coconut oil are about the most heat-stable oils out there. Oils that decay quickly when overheated are the same oils that also decay during cure of soaps.

Sometimes pots have some dirt on the outside, or in between the layers of a sandwhich bottom, or some spill on the hotplate, that might give off-smells (it gets much hotter than the inside of the pot).

 

[cascarral]

Thank you both!! This really helped I didn't toss them and the soap looks fine.