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For the past several months I’ve been making my own DIY tallow hand salve. I love the fact that making your own hand salve allows you to customize it with whatever herbs you have on hand and want to use. And this salve is made with just a few simple ingredients that are all natural, too. And, even though you have to buy some of the initial ingredients for making the save, once you have those ingredients each individual batch of homemade hand salve ends up being a lot cheaper that what it would cost to buy an herbal hand salve at a store.

This tallow hand salve is nice and moisturizing for dry skin, and I’ve found it to work well for my sensitive skin also. I use it as an everyday moisturizer as a substitute for hand cream, but you could use it more like a spot treatment as needed, too.

Ingredients for This Hand Salve Recipe

Tallow

I use tallow as the main ingredient for this DIY hand salve recipe because I find it to be the most moisturizing. If you don’t have access to tallow or if you prefer not to use it, you could try substituting coconut oil since the two are similar in the sense that they are both liquid fats in warm temperatures and solid in colder temperatures. I don’t personally find coconut oil to be as good of a moisturizer as tallow is for dry or sensitive skin, but it can still be a good option if using tallow isn’t an option for you.

If you have access to tallow from your own cows or from local grass-fed cows then that would be the best option for sourcing your tallow, but since that isn’t possible for many of us (including me), you can also buy tallow online or in health food stores. I’ve been getting mine at a local health food store in my town. The best online price I’ve found for the grass-fed tallow that I usually get is from Vitacost. It’s also available for a bit more at Amazon. A jar of tallow will make several batches of hand salve (or you can also use it for cooking, too) so once you have a jar it will end up being economical in the long run.

Jojoba Oil

The other oil that I use for making this hand salve is jojoba oil. You don’t have to use jojoba oil if you don’t have that on hand. Any oil that stays liquid at room temperature will work fine for this recipe. A lot of people use olive oil for salve recipes like this. I’ve read before, though, that olive oil might not be the best choice for people who are prone to eczema, though, so that’s something to consider, and that’s the reason why I choose to use jojoba oil instead. This is the kind of jojoba oil I have been using recently. And, just like with the tallow, a bottle of jojoba oil will be enough for several batches of hand salve or for a good sized batch of herb-infused oil if you decide to infuse your herbs the slower way as described below.

Beeswax

For the beeswax, I like to use the pellets of beeswax rather than getting a solid block of beeswax. I’ve tried both kinds, and I find the pellets so much easier to measure out and use. The blocks will work fine, too, if that’s what you have available to you, but you have to grate or shave off the amount you need, and that takes extra work. The pellets are really easy to and quick to work with, so they save the extra step of preparing the beeswax. I’ve been getting beeswax pellets at a local health food store, but you can also find a variety of different options of beeswax pellets online from Amazon.

Herbs

The herbs that you use for this recipe can be really flexible. I will share the ones that I usually use, but you can really use any herbs that you have or substitute ones that you like better. And you don’t have to use all of the herbs that I used either. Even if you just picked one herb to use you can make a really nice herbal hand salve recipe with just a single herb. Or if you have two or three herbs you can use those rather than using all five of the ones that I typically use. (Note: I used dried versions of all of these herbs rather than fresh herbs when I was making my salve.)

The herbs that I used for making this herbal hand salve are:

• Calendula flowers
• Chamomile flowers
• Lavender flowers
• Violet leaves
• Plantain Leaves

These herbs are all ones that are really good for the skin, and they have soothing, anti-inflammatory properties to them. Any one of these would make a good hand salve, so you can pick just a couple of them if you don’t want to get all of these different herbs.

I was able to grow some of these herbs in my garden (calendula, chamomile, and lavender) and the violet leaves and plantain leaves were just growing wild in the yard as “weeds” that I was able to forage. I harvested and dried them earlier in the year, and it was nice to be able to save them for using for recipes like this hand salve.

If you aren’t able to grow your own herbs or forage for them or if it’s winter and you need to buy herbs because it’s not the right season for growing them you can find some of these herbs at local health food stores. I know of a store near me that has chamomile flowers and lavender flowers. You could also even get some chamomile tea bags from a grocery store and use those if you needed to.

You can also find many of these herbs online. I recently ordered some calendula flowers because I was running out of the ones that I grew in my garden. Violet leaf is one that is difficult to find online, but you can just omit that from this recipe. I added it to mine because I had plenty of violets growing out in my yard, but you can leave it out if you don’t have violet leaves. You can find plantain leaves on Amazon as well as chamomile flowers and lavender flowers.

I know that it can add up to get all of the ingredients for making hand salve at one time, so to save on the cost, you could always start with just one herb and then add more over time because once you get a bulk bag of herbs you will have enough for lots of batches of hand salve or for other batches of hand salve or even possibly for herbal tea, too. (But make sure to do your research before trying a new herb internally and check with a medical professional if you have health conditions or if you are pregnant or nursing since some herbs can be contraindicated for those things.)

Another option if you don’t have easy access to dried herbs or if you don’t want to take the time to infuse the herbs would be to just omit them from the recipe and make a plain salve with tallow, jojoba oil, and beeswax, or to make a plain salve and then add some essential oils to it.

Tins for Storing Salve

If you have any old salve tins leftover from store bought hand salve you could always wash those out and reuse them for this recipe. You will need a tin big enough to hold two ounces (or two smaller one ounce tins would work fine, too). You can also find empty two ounce salve tins online. You could also store your salve in a small glass jelly jar or something like that although you will probably end up with quite a bit of empty space in the jar unless you make a double batch of the salve.

Two Methods of Infusing Herbs Into Your Salve

Depending on how quickly you want to make this salve recipe, you can add the herbs to the salve in a couple of different ways.

The Quick Infusion Method

If you want to be able to make your hand salve right away, then you can do a quick infusion method to infuse the properties of the herbs into the oil. This method allows you to make your hand salve on the same day that you infuse your herbs into the oil, but it does require a bit more hands on time on the day that you make the salve.

To do this, you would melt your tallow in a double boiler on a medium-low heat. Then you would add your herbs to the melted tallow. I don’t usually bother measuring out the herbs for doing this. You could use somewhere around 1 Tablespoon to 2 Tablespoons of dried herbs. The main thing is just to make sure that your oil is covering the herbs. I also like to crush up the herbs a bit so that they are in smaller pieces.

Then you would just let the herbs infuse in the warm tallow for several hours or for as long as you are able to leave them there. You don’t want the heat to be too high, though, because you don’t want to cook the herbs. You just want the warmth to help the herbs to infuse faster. The water in the pan for your double boiler should just be at a simmer. You don’t want it to be boiling.

Then, after the herbs have infused for as long as you are able to let them, you would strain the herbs out of the tallow into a bowl with a piece of fine cheesecloth. If you use herbs that are in really small pieces (like the tiny petals of chamomile flowers) I find that it’s helpful to double up on the cheesecloth to strain them all out. You could also use something like a tea towel to strain the herbs, but just be aware that the grease from the tallow will make washing the towel more difficult.

The Slower Infusion Method

The slower infusion method takes longer for actually infusing the herbs into the oil, but once it is done then the process of making the salve goes much faster, and since you would be making more infused oil that you would need for just one batch of salve, the oil would already be ready to go for the next time you want to make a batch of hand salve.

For the slow infusion where you would put your herbs in a glass Mason jar and then cover the herbs with your jojoba oil (or whatever other liquid oil you are using). For the faster infusion method, I infuse the herbs into the tallow but for the slower infusion method I use the jojoba oil. When I made mine, I used a 4 ounce jelly jar because I didn’t have enough jojoba oil for some of the larger sizes of jars. This will make quite a bit more herb-infused oil than you would need to make a single batch of this hand salve, but you could save the extra for future batches or for other DIY recipes that need herb-infused oil.

To make this infusion, you would fill your jar about half way to three quarters full of herbs and then add enough jojoba oil to completely cover the herbs and fill up the jar. After making sure that all of the herbs are fully covered with the jojoba oil you would put the lid on the jar and let the herbs infuse into the oil at room temperature for 4-6 weeks, shaking the jar as often as you remember to. (It’s ideal to shake it every day, but I usually remember to do it more like every other day . . .) It’s also a good idea to check to make sure that the herbs are still covered with the oil each time you check the jar.

Some herbalists recommend storing the jar in a dark place like inside a cupboard while the herbs are infusing, and some herbalists recommend putting the jar in a sunny window to let the warmth of the sun help the oils to infuse. I’ve tried it both ways, and I’m not sure if one way is any better than the other, so my opinion would be to just do whatever is the most convenient for you. Then, after the 4-6 weeks is finished, you would strain the herbs out of the oil using cheesecloth. I’ve found that it usually works best to double up the cheesecloth when you are straining out the herbs, especially if you have small bits of herbs like chamomile petals. And once you have strained all of the herbs out of the oil you will end up with an herb-infused oil that is ready to add to your salve or to any other recipe that you want to use it for.

Notes About the Recipe

The Scent of the Hand Salve

The basic recipe that I use doesn’t really have a strong scent to it. It smells to me like a blend of beeswax and tallow, and I don’t really notice the scent of the herbs. If you want this to be a scented hand salve, you could add some essential oils to give it more of a scent. I just make it plain without the essential oils, but if I was going to use them I would recommend using something like lavender essential oil (or any other oil that you like.) I wouldn’t recommend using a citrus essential oil, though, because, even though they smell nice, the citrus oils can cause your skin to be more sensitive to the sun, so they wouldn’t be the best choice for putting on your hands unless you are using this in the winter time when you are wearing gloves outside and not really exposing your skin to the sun like you would in the summer time.

Storing Your Hand Salve

It’s best to store this hand salve in a dry place that doesn’t get too hot. Because the tallow and beeswax will soften and melt in temperatures that are too hot, this should be stored away from heat, and I wouldn’t recommend leaving it in a hot car during the summer time. It’s also important to keep moisture out of the salve to keep it from spoiling. If you store it at room temperature in a dry place it should last well for several weeks. I use this daily as a substitute for hand cream, so I don’t ever end up keeping a batch of this around for more than a few weeks, but if it’s kept clean then I would think it should be able to keep well for longer than that. Like with all homemade preservative-free products, it’s always a good idea to keep an eye out for any changes in odor or appearance.

Using the Hand Salve

If you are using this hand salve as a substitute for hand cream, I’ve found that it is the easiest to apply if you put it on right after washing your hands when your skin is still a bit damp. It sinks in faster that way and doesn’t leave your hands quite as greasy. When you first put this on, it is thicker than regular store bought hand cream, and it will leave your hands with a bit of a greasy feel at first, but after a minute or two it will all sink in. Using a smaller amount on damp skin will help it to sink in in faster.

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The information in this post is not to be taken as medical advice and is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease.