Highlights
- Simmer pots use common grocery store ingredients that cost significantly less than luxury candles
- One batch can fill your home with holiday scents for several hours, and the ingredients can be reused
- The steam-based method works well in Louisiana’s humid climate for whole-home fragrance
- All ingredients available at Rouses, Albertsons, and Dollar General locations across Acadiana
- Recipe takes 5 minutes to prep and ingredients can be batch-made and frozen for convenience
Why Lafayette Families Are Ditching $50 Candles for This $10 Holiday Scent Trick
This centuries-old method costs less than a trip to any grocery store and works better in Louisiana’s humid climate than expensive luxury candles
LAFAYETTE, La. (KPEL News) — Walk into any general or home goods store in Lafayette this holiday season, and you’ll see luxury candles priced at $35, $50, even $75 for a single jar. But families trying to create that warm holiday atmosphere without the sticker shock may want to consider dusting off a generations-old solution that costs a fraction of the price: simmer pots.
The math is simple. A luxury candle might set you back $40 to $50. A simmer pot uses ingredients you can pick up at a grocery store for around $10, and those ingredients can be reused multiple times. For families who go through several candles during the holiday season, the savings add up fast.
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Every year, you can see on social media all the families who discover what their grandmothers knew all along: simmering spices and citrus on the stove creates a home fragrance that candles can’t match, especially in our climate.
What Lafayette Families Need to Know About Simmer Pots
If you’ve never heard of simmer pots—also called stovetop potpourri or simmer potpourri—the concept is pretty straightforward. You fill a pot with water, add fruits, spices, and herbs, bring it to a boil, then let it simmer on low. The steam carries the fragrance throughout your house for hours…