How to Make Tallow Candles
These homemade tallow candles are wonderful to have on hand in case of an emergency or power outage, but they are also great for everyday use as well! Make a few extras to give away as gifts and you’ll impress all of your friends and family, for sure!
Equipment
- Tallow (beef, venison) Organic, grass-finished
- Essential oil(s) Optional
- Pencils or popsicle sticks Optional
- Hot glue gun Optional
Instructions
- Gently melt the tallow in a double boiler. Once it has melted, turn off the heat and let cool slightly while you’re working on the next steps. If the tallow starts to cool so much that it hardens, kick on the heat again for a few minutes.
- If you want to add some essential oils to your tallow candle, now is a great time while the tallow is cooling off. I’ve found that 40-50 drops is about right for each 8 oz jar, but you may want more or less depending on the intensity of the oil you are using.
- If you pour warm tallow into cold jars, they could crack or even worse, shatter. Gently warm the jars first by placing them in your oven on the lowest setting.
- Add a wick (or even 2-3, depending on the size of your jar) to the warmed jars and make sure that it’s centered. Use 2 pencils set over the top of the jar to hold the wick in place. You can also hot glue the round tab to the bottom of the jar to ensure that it doesn’t move.
- Carefully pour the slightly cooled but still liquid tallow into the prepared jar ensuring that the wick stays straight and in place.
- Leave the jar uncovered and simply walk away for a bit. Once it has completely cooled and hardened, trim the wick to ¼” long.
- Store your beautiful tallow candle in a cool, dark location when not in use.
Video
Notes
-Make sure that you're using an essential oil with a high flash point such as cedarwood, cinnamon, fir, sandalwood, geranium, patchouli, or myrrh.
-How much tallow should you melt for your containers? It’s hard to know exactly since we’re converting from a solid to a liquid, so I just eyeball it and go from there. For each 8 oz jar, I shoot for 1 cup of tallow.
-If you didn’t melt enough tallow, no problem! Melt down a bit more and top it off.
-If you have extra tallow, then make another candle, make my Whipped Tallow Balm, or add the remainder back to your tallow container to use later.
Did you try my recipe?Let me know how it was!