A Holiday Simmer Pot With a Fir Finish
Most of what makes a simmer pot smell like the holidays is the fruit and the spice. Oranges, cranberries and cinnamon do the heavy lifting. Fir needle oil is the finishing touch: two drops at the very end give the kitchen a cold-air, evergreen edge that fruit alone cannot.
Fir Needle Essential Oil
Our own Fir Needle Essential Oil, in sizes from 0.5 oz to bulk.
From $10.99
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- 1.5 litres of water (about 6 cups)
- 1 orange, sliced
- 100 g fresh cranberries
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 1 teaspoon whole cloves
- Optional: 2 drops of fir needle oil, added in the last few minutes
Put everything except the oil in a saucepan or slow cooker and bring it to a bare simmer. Check the water level now and then and top up with hot water, since a pot that boils dry scorches the fruit and then the pan. When you are ready, add the oil, stir once and leave it. Afterwards, turn off the heat, let the pot cool and pour it away. It is scented water, not a stock or a drink, so keep it away from children and animals.
We sell the fir oil only, so the fruit and spice come from your grocery. We like fir with orange peel in a simmer pot, and the pairing works for a reason: citrus peel is bright and quick, fir is cool and resinous, and together they feel like December.
Why the oil goes in last, and why two drops is plenty
The Certificate of Analysis we publish for one batch gives a relative density of 0.924 at 20 C. Water is 1.0, so the oil is lighter and floats. It does not mix in, either. Reasoning from that, the oil sits as a thin film on the surface and its scent leaves from the top of the pot as vapour. That has two practical consequences. First, adding it at the start just means it spends hours escaping before you are in the room to enjoy it. Second, more oil means a bigger film, not a bigger aroma in the water, so a few drops is the sensible limit.
A drop is about 0.05 ml by the usual convention, so two drops is a tenth of a millilitre. That is a very small amount of oil, which is part of the charm: a 0.5 oz bottle is far more than a simmer pot will ever use.
Keep an eye on the stove
The oil is the small part of the safety picture. The US Fire Administration calls cooking by far the leading cause of home fires and home fire injuries, and says equipment left running with nobody watching is the biggest ignition factor in cooking fires that are not confined to the pot, at 37 percent of cases. Its advice is plain: if you leave the kitchen, turn the burner off (Cooking Fire Safety).
A simmer pot is a pan on a burner for a long stretch, which is exactly the situation that advice covers. We therefore recommend a slow cooker on low for anything longer than an hour, because it takes the open burner out of the picture. That is a judgment call, not a statistic: we know of no data comparing the two. Either way, stay in the house, and keep the oil's film away from any flame.
Households that should skip the oil
The ASPCA says concentrated essential oils can be a danger to dogs and cats that walk through them or get them on their coat, that a diffuser used briefly in a room a pet cannot enter is unlikely to cause trouble, and that it is best to avoid diffusers if you have birds, whose respiratory systems are very sensitive (The Essentials of Essential Oils Around Pets). That article does not mention simmer pots, so applying it to one is our own reasoning. A pot with oil on the surface is open to a cat on the counter and scents the air for hours.
Pet Poison Helpline has a page on liquid potpourri, a commercial product rather than a home pot, warning of burns to the mouth and that cats are especially sensitive to the corrosive chemicals in some of them (Liquid Potpourri Is Toxic To Cats). It is not a statement about fruit and spice water, but it is a good reminder to keep any pot out of reach. If you have a bird, a cat, or a pet that drinks from pots or counters, make the fruit-and-spice version and leave the oil out. It is still a lovely pot. If an animal does drink from it, call your veterinarian or a poison line.
More ways to scent the season
If a stove is not right for your household, our guide to making the house smell like a Christmas tree compares gentler routes. For what to pair with fir through the month, our holiday weeks guide has ideas, and the gifts article covers things you can hand over wrapped.
Make the pot generous with fruit, stingy with oil, and give it your attention, and it will do exactly what you hoped it would do.
Fir Needle Essential Oil
Fir Needle Essential Oil from our own shop, in sizes from 0.5 oz to bulk.
From $10.99
Shop Now →