A body scrub is the one piece of skincare where making it yourself is not a compromise. Three ingredients, one bowl, five minutes, and nothing in it that needs a laboratory.
It is also very hard to get wrong. Too oily, too salty, a bit soft, a bit stiff: all of it still works on your skin. This is a scrub, not a soufflé.
Why salt, and when sugar is easier on you
Salt is coarser than sugar and stays gritty while you work. That makes it right for heels, elbows, knees, and hands that have done something more useful than typing.
Sugar dissolves as it warms, so it eases off halfway through. Gentler and more forgiving, and the better pick for easily irritated skin. There is a sugar scrub in our full DIY list if that sounds more like you.
Worth knowing before you start: salt dissolves in water, not in fat. Mixed into Shea butter and oil, the crystals stay whole and stay sharp, right up to the moment they meet water on your skin. That is why the scrub keeps its grit in the jar for months, and why a wet spoon is the one thing that will spoil it.
And fine sea salt is not dust. A crystal is a crystal, it has corners. The difference between fine and coarse is not whether it scratches, it is how much it scratches at once. Coarse salt rolls around and works in patches, with the occasional big grain dragging across in a way you feel afterwards. Fine salt covers evenly and does the same work with less force. Fine for the body, coarse for heels.
Salt is not gentle. That is the whole point of it.
What you need
- Raw Shea butter.
- A splash of Baobab oil, or any light oil already in the house.
- Fine sea salt. Coarse works too if you are doing feet.
- An immersion blender, a bowl, a fork, and a jar with a lid.
The way we make it, nothing gets weighed. Whip the Shea butter until it is light, add the oil, whip it lighter still, then fold the salt in with a fork until it feels right. Roughly twice as much salt as butter is the shape of it, and the oil is about 30 percent of the butter. More salt scrubs harder, less salt moisturizes more, and both are correct.
Making it once, for a sauna evening or two? Then skip the blender and use a ratio instead. About 80 g fine sea salt, 40 g Shea butter and 12 g Baobab oil. A fork does the whole job.
On the salt: ordinary fine sea salt from the kitchen cupboard is completely fine. If you want to go further, Salt'sUp is a salt shop with over sixty salts and peppers on the shelf, shipping worldwide, and honestly you could take any of them. We picked the Kalahari fine desert salt because it comes from Africa, like the butter. It is dried by the desert sun and has had nothing done to it at all, not even iodine. For heels and feet, their coarse Himalayan pink salt comes in a refill pack and is unrefined as well. Nobody bleached any of it.
It is a lovely shop to fall into. Salt from the Kalahari, from Guérande, from the Himalayas, from the Dead Sea, in jars that look like they belong on the counter rather than in a cupboard.
It also solves a lot of presents. Almost nobody buys good salt for themselves, and a jar of it fits a housewarming, a Christmas, or the person who already has everything.
How to make it
- Whip the Shea butter with an immersion blender until it is pale, fluffy and has grown in the bowl. This is the step that makes the difference.
- Add the Baobab oil and whip again, until it is lighter still and looks like soft frosting.
- Fold the salt in with a fork, in two goes. Not the blender: it would grind the crystals down, and the grit is the reason you are here.
- Spoon it into a dry jar. Press it down and put the lid on.
No blender? A fork does all of it. You get a denser scrub rather than a fluffy one, and it works exactly the same on your skin.
Add a few drops of essential oil at the end if you want it scented.
If it comes out oilier than you expected, stir in more salt. If it comes out dry, another splash of oil. It behaves.
How to use it
Warm your skin first, then turn the water off. Take a scoop, work in circles for a minute or so, and give the rough spots more time. Rinse warm and pat dry. There is enough Shea butter in it that you may not need anything else afterwards, which is the part people find suspicious until they try it.
One real warning. Oil on a tiled floor is slippery. Hold on to something, and rinse the shower down when you are done.
Once or twice a week is plenty. Keep it off your face, off freshly shaved skin, and off anything sore or sunburnt.
Two variations, same bowl
- Foot scrub. Coarse salt, half the oil. Follow it with plain Shea butter and a pair of socks overnight.
- Bath soak. Two spoons under running water. The salt dissolves, the Shea butter does not, and it will leave a ring on the tub. Worth it, and now you know.
Three small things worth knowing
- Keep water out of the jar. There is no water in the recipe, so wet fingers are the only thing that will spoil it. A small dry spoon solves it for good.
- Not the bathroom windowsill. Heat and light are the two things Shea butter dislikes. A cupboard keeps it happy.
- It keeps for a long time. Raw Shea butter does not spoil the way food does. After about two years, it can slowly start losing some of its skin-loving benefits, but that does not mean it has gone bad. It will still moisturize your skin for years.
Where to keep it
Any clean jar with a lid works, and a screw-top jam jar has held more homemade scrub than every container ever sold for the purpose. Make as much as you like and keep it in whatever you already own.
Two things worth knowing before you pick one. Glass and a tiled shower floor have an argument coming, and the tiles always win. Plastic survives that, and it is the one material in your bathroom with no good ending, because it comes back as something worse every time it is recycled.
Metal is the quiet winner. It recycles endlessly with no loss, it does not shatter, and it keeps light out. Any tin will do. Ours is an empty metal tin 120 ml | 4 oz, and it comes empty on purpose. It is an option, not part of the recipe, and the pouch works perfectly well on its own.
Why raw Shea butter for this
Refining strips Shea butter down to something pale and odorless, and takes most of what makes it worth using along with it. Raw, unrefined Shea butter is rich in oleic and stearic fatty acids and naturally contains vitamins A and E. It smells faintly nutty and smoky, because it was made over a wood fire by the women in our cooperative in Northern Ghana, and that smell is the receipt.
Baobab oil works from the other direction: cold-pressed, high in omega-6 and omega-9 fatty acids with some omega-3, natural tocopherols, and light enough to sink in fast.
If you make things at home, buy the oil in a size that survives it. The Shea butter 450 g | 16 oz and Baobab oil 210 ml | 7.1 fl oz set is the pair we reach for, and the bigger bottle costs far less per milliliter than a small one, which matters once you start using the oil for everything else too.
Buying in the United States? Everything is on our Amazon store. Anywhere else, start with our Raw Shea Butter and Cold-Pressed Baobab Oil.
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