If you have expired cooking oil, don’t throw it away!
One of the key aspects of living a self-sufficient lifestyle is to become resourceful by finding multiple uses for the many items in your home. One of the most multipurpose items that you probably have in your home (and specifically in your kitchen) is cooking oil.
Besides its intended uses for frying and baking foods, there are a myriad of other cool roles that cooking oil can serve for you as well.
Biodiesel Production
One of the most practical uses for used cooking oil is converting it into biodiesel. This fuel can power diesel engines without major modifications.
The process involves filtering the oil and treating it with methanol and lye. Producing biodiesel at home is a cost-effective way to save money on fuel and increase self-sufficiency.
Plus, it’s a smart solution for making the most out of something you’d otherwise throw away.
Remove Rust From Your Metal Gear
Do you have any metal tools or objects that are rusting? Perhaps a firearm, a knife, an ax, kitchen utensils, or any gardening tools you have? If so, you can use cooking oil to help remove it.
Vegetable oil is the best choice for removing rust from cast iron, while linseed cooking oil is ideal for removing rust from steel. Just mix a generous amount of cooking oil with two or three tablespoons of salt, and then dampen a rag or a paper towel in the resulting solution.
Proceed to scrub the rusty area vigorously. If this fail, you should try a WD-40 rust remover.
Rust Proof Your Metal Gear Before It Rusts
Better yet, you can also use cooking oil to rust proof your metal gear before it can even rust in the first place.
The reason why cooking oil can be used to protect your gear is because the molecules present in the cooking oil cannot be dissolved in water, as the two repel each other.
Related: 5 Survival Tools and Gear You Should Avoid When SHTF
That’s why you can apply a thin layer of cooking oil to the metal surfaces of whatever gear or tools you want to protect and it should keep rust at bay.
Lubricate Chainsaws
Do you have an old chainsaw where the chain is having a little difficulty removing?
If so, old canola oil can serve as an excellent alternative to chainsaw lubricant.
This is because canola has a high viscosity level and excellent lubricity.
Protect Wood From Rotting
It’s not just metal that you can protect with old cooking oil. You can use it to protect wood as well. As mentioned above, cooking oil will repel water because the molecules will not dissolve in it.
As a result, when you apply a layer of it over the surface of wood, it will stop the wood from absorbing water, which could cause it to expand and eventually rot.
Related: 7 Primitive Cooking Methods You Still Need to Know Today
A good use case for this is with gardening tools, the wooden components of which are often vulnerable to moisture.
Protect Your Leather
You can also use cooking oil to protect leather to stop it from cracking. You can do this with belts, shoes, saddles, bags/backpacks, or holsters.
All it takes is a small amount of cooking oil to gently apply over the surface of leather, and it should protect the leather against cracking for at least a month.
Get a Fire Going
Old cooking oil can also be an ideal solution to help you get a good fire going.
Simply rub some cooking oil onto whatever you are using for kindling or tinder, such as old newspaper, moss, or twigs or small pieces of wood.
Then bring it into contact with a spark generated by a magnesium flint striker or a flame from a lighter or match, and the cooking oil should catch fire instantly.
Remove Paint
You’re probably acutely aware that it can be very difficult to get paint removed from your hands, body, or clothes after a painting job. One of the easiest ways to get paint removed, however, is to use cooking oil.
Simply rub it directly onto the paint and you’ll start to notice the paint scrubbing away. Then you can apply water mixed with soap to wash it away. It’s really that easy.
Make Your Own DIY Soap
It’s also super easy to make your own DIY homemade soap using cooking oil and lye. Just follow these steps:
Add around 2.5 ounces of lye to around 5 ounces of water (not the other way around). Stir the mixture together gently, until the lye is fully dissolved.- Strain the used cooking oil to remove any impurities, then heat approximately 18 ounces over the stove until it reaches around 212 degrees Fahrenheit or 100 degrees Celsius.
- Remove the cooking oil from the stove and allow it to cool.
- Now mix the lye-water solution and the cooking oil together by adding the lye solution to the pot with the oil.
- Stir the mixture together until it thickens, then pour it into soap molds.
- After 24-48 hours, remove the soap from the molds. It should be firm enough to handle.
- Place the bars on a drying rack in a well-ventilated area and allow them to cure for 4-6 weeks. Turn the bars occasionally to ensure even curing.
Make Your Hinges Stop Squeaking
Do you have any door hinges that are annoying squeaking when you open and close the door?
If so, just apply a small amount of lubricant to the hinges and the squeakiness should start to go away.
Livestock Feed Supplement
Used cooking oil can also be repurposed as a feed supplement for livestock, adding valuable calories to their diet.
Mix it with regular feed to provide an energy boost for animals such as pigs and chickens. To boost and even double egg production in chickens, consider mixing it with this plant.
However, it’s important to ensure the oil is properly filtered and free from harmful contaminants. Introduce the oil gradually into their diet and monitor the animals for any adverse reactions. This method not only reduces waste but also supports the health and productivity of your livestock.
Keep Mosquitoes Away
Do you have any areas on your property or campsite with a lot of mosquitoes around? Cooking oil could be the next best thing that you have on hand to help solve this problem other than mosquito repellant.
Apply a half teaspoon of vegetable oil for every gallon of water where mosquitoes are congregating and breeding. The mosquitoes won’t stand the oil and it won’t take long for them to go away.
Harden Soil
Cooking oil will travel around an inch down into soil and cause it to toughen up, especially as people walk or cars drive over it. This will help prevent dust from coming up while you walk or drive though, which could be useful in your driveway or any dusty areas in your backyard.
Just make sure that you don’t use cooking oil over any areas with plant growth, as it can suffocate the roots.
There are many more survival and DIY uses, but the above are perhaps the ones that you are most likely to use.
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Great article! You did excellent job
Agreed, this was a good one!
Are you going to use that nasty oil on your cycle?
Used cooking oil does not rust protect, most of the natural oil content has been subject to high temperatures. Cooked any of the rust protection useless.
Don’t believe dumping used cooking oil on anywhere on our property is a good idea, other than for cooking food and throwing away in the trash pickup can.
Used oil for these purposes is filtered and then used. SOMETIMES you get outdated oil and can used straight. I would use it on a fire before I put it in the landfill.
Dumping used motor oil and used cooking oil on the ground as said in the above article is a health hazard. You might think it works but down the road that is not a good solution.
Used oil is just that used up no good.
Agree DC, the good quality properties are heated up there is no useful properties left in the motor oil or the cooking oil.
Burning the oils inside a home may cause health problems for sensitive respiratory individuals reading by the wicked jars at night.
Hi Dixie, most people trying to use wasted oils probably not seen the aftermath cleanup of oil spills on ground soils, a hard mess to clean up.
Even old gas stations and old mechanic sites not properly cleaned up still are not usable to grow plants and harmful to animals.
Just a thought for those considering using oil for what it was not intended for.
Think twice act once.
By putting a 1/2 cup oil in a pint sized jar, add a wick holder and small wick and you have emergency lighting. You may get an aroms from the oil, but usually not disgusting. You can pick up wick holders wherever they sell supplies. If the oil is pretty well spent it may not burn great, but its an extra resource when you need it and worth the trial. Most frying oil still has a little life in it. IT’S NOT SUGGESTED TO PUT IN A STANDARD OIL LAMP!!! BURNS TOO ODD SOMETIMES FOR THAT. Just try it and judge for yourself.
I would not use cooking oil on my leather and the author says it may help for a month? No way, Sam.
If you are growing plants, trees, vegetable garden why would we want to harden our soils?
Many areas have poor soil content like rocky clay soils don’t need anymore compaction of the soil, not a good suggestion.
Cooking oil goes rancid, smelly can attract unwanted pests.
Has anyone really given used cooking oil to your livestock, really?
Some of these ideas are rehashed from previous articles. Do anyone actually take these articles as gospel truth?
Did this article come from re-posting from say Trick Talk social media challenge or an AI written post elsewhere?
Mix some of it in with my dog food when I feed my hunting dogs who are worked hard during the fall and winter months and it definitely does keep them in good shape just don’t overdo it
The oil has been heated like kibble dog food, the oil has very little nutrients left for a dog to be healthy, maybe harmful.
Ask your vet first before giving it to a pet.
Throw that used oil away, period.
There are other useful products to use.
Another rehashed post from some suggested uses that have not been well thought out and used to verify these actually work.
Maybe we can dump used oil on the Chinese owned American farmland next to our military bases a very dangerous tactic. They own farmland by Camp Pendleton CA. Many bases well known bases in Jeopardy!
Both political parties under the Let’s go Brandon are in on selling us out to our enemies, period.
They are borrowing money from foreign countries like China to own our America, enough, MAGA!!!!, One election left to turn around our America!
Why hasn’t anyone looked at why Chinese nationals are flooding our southern border for jobs?
No way they are here with other terrorist to make a mass invasion from these farms to do terror attacks within our America!
Many Americans are asleep at the wheel, our politicians and corporations are selling us out. Can we stop this madness?
Whose country is America for in today’s political and religious world of our sovereignty?
We are talking about our America collapsing before our lying eyes, are we up to pushing back to save our God given American land back?
Stop your complaining, our America has been sold to China, we are just waking up from our woke sleep to reality.
The expensive and limited availability of cooking oil in poor countries is a serious problem. In a SHTF cooking oil is going to be too precious to pour it on your chainsaw. Need to learn how to fry w/o burning the oil, it can last a long time if you strain the food bits out of it and filter it every few uses. Thoreau said, “Economize, economize, economize.”.
With all these great industrial uses of “cooking” oil, who would actually eat this stuff??? If our country is currently being sold to the highest bidder, then our health was absolutely sold a long time ago when “doctors” and media told us that OIL 🛢 (which was originally created as submarine engine lubricant because of its high Flashpoint as well as odorless and smokeless properties. Look it up!) was actually safe for human consumption.
Save the venting of politics somewhere else. This is about oil.
Yes don’t use old crappy oil, drill baby drill, for new oil in America again!
Other wise posters of past comments are correct; prepping is married into politics and religion from the pioneers to those 1970 survivalist to preppers.
You can’t keep yourself in a bubble, we are Under Siege.
Thank you Nancy or is it Karen?
Yes Lisa Blake, we should bury our heads in the sand. Politics is part of current events as to how we prep for, not in a vacuum.
Well then you can go back in your bunker and do whatever you do with your oil while the rest of us try and save America so we don’t need these articles….10-4?
Your Bidenomics president put us into saving used stuff because he didn’t like America first attitude. We have exhausted our future generations to the taxpayer give a ways to illegals and countries at war. Our military supplies are depleted by Biden.
Then taking care of our own people first and cleaning up the drugged out homeless pandering. Take our street back, maybe dumping used oil at the homeless areas would stop the the mess we are in, Nancy!
You can make an emergency oil lamp out of used cooking oil …
YouTube
Does that wick generated enough heat to eventually crack the jar glass?
veg oil save, motor oil save it will be useful
How do you use old motor oil that has been well used in a motor with metal and chemical additives, not sure I would considered saving it.
Pour one cup used motor oil and one cup K1
into metal coffee can, fill with clean dry sand.
Push strip of rag cloth to bottom and ignite. No more mosquitoes.
That motor oil has a sooty smoke covering our clean patio area, better to use citronella candles instead.
Breathing in that foul air is not good for asthma people when medical help will be hard to find.
I save used cooking oil to feed to my chickens in the wintertime when they need more calories. I save it in the freezer and bring it out when I need it.
Bacon grease on the other hand, makes great cream gravy!
I have a quart jar filled with used cooking oil and didn’t know what to do with it, but couldn’t throw it away. I’ve started making candles and a light bulb went off over my head! Buy or make wicks and a stable wick stand and use it as an alternative candle. I have been using paper towels lately to soak up grease when cooking and toss them. I live in small apartment and do have room to save everything, I am anxiously waiting till I can make a contraption for the jar and use it as a candle; for when the SHTF!!!
Do NOT use cooking oil as a lubricant. Many cooking oils do what is called polymerizing, in other words it dries into a hard coating. That is the reason linseed oil is used as a finish for wood and metal. As an experiment get a cup and pour a small bit of linseed oil into it and let it sit. After a week you will see a rubbery film start to form. After about 3 weeks the whole mess will be a thick rubbery goop.
As a blacksmith by trade have to choose my finishes for metal very carefully. On decorative pieces i use linseed oil. On cooking utensils my preferred oil is olive oil. Olive oil in a spray can like you buy at the grocery. I use them becuase they will polymerize and olive oil is food safe. However if i have no olive oil i will get the spray can of vegatable oil the wife uses and get almost as good results.
In a pinch, yes it will work. But over time you will end up with a nasty gummy residue. Do you really want that in your firearms or chainsaw?
The thing about depression and recession
you must get creative and use what ever yu can
a must is , you must consider your area, your resources, your ability to store , save and reuse with out creating a toxic dump, Fire hazard , or a clean up nightmare you did not want
plan , print , save good articles or documents in files for that time
Lable properly , Time , Date , product type
we must learn to reuse our resources and be smart about what is coming our way
and it will be bad for about 80% of the Gen Pop
While you sleep , the invasion keeps coming to take over , take freely , but take what they want .
look it up , see the real news
Been cutting wood for 60 years have always used, used motor oil to lubricate the chain instead of bar oil. Used motor oil works well on wooden trailer decks use 1 gallon diesel to 1 gallon of used motor oil, mix and apply with roller.
Yes, I remember years ago equipment operators spraying dump truck beds and loader buckets with diesel/oil so the clay soil wouldn’t stick.
Nother old chainsaw trick, if you’re trying to cut rail road ties supplement the chain oil with a couple good squeezes of Dawn dish soap on the bar. Even better, don’t cut railroad ties with a chainsaw, use a cutoff saw.