How to Cook with Cannabis

If you’re new to cannabis you can be forgiven for not knowing Legalization Day is upon us. For the rest of us, we remember how fun this celebration was last year and are now thinking about how we can safely celebrate in a much smaller, socially distanced way. One idea? Use the cooking and baking skills you’ve honed during covid lockdowns and create your own cannabis edibles! 

But I’ve tried edibles and they’re not strong enough

We hear it all the time from customers, “I don’t like smoking because it hurts my throat and lungs, but  a 10mg edible does nothing to me”. If you still want to consume THC though, your options are plentiful!

Our first real “edible” product was an ingestible oil. These are small bottles around 30ml that contain a carrier oil like MCT/Coconut oil/Sunflower oil, etc. Contained within that carrier oil are extracted and decarboxylated THC and CBD molecules, ready to be processed by your stomach and sent through your bloodstream to be converted into 11-OH-THC.

Although the package limit for a food edible is 10mg of THC, these ingestible oils are able to contain up to 999mg of THC per package. Most come with a dropper or syringe that allows you to titrate your perfect dose using the potency mg/ml written on the package. Usually containers have 10-30mg/ml of THC which means that a 1ml dropper full of 30mg/ml oil would contain 30mg of THC.

So, do I just drink the whole bottle?

Be careful! These ingestible oils are for experienced edible users, new users can easily overdo it by taking more than a very small amount at a time.

These oils can be taken on their own, however they really shine when used to infuse your own foods or drink. Best added to a fatty, oily food but you can pour them on or in just about anything. The only thing to note is that if you are going to be baking the food, add your oil when you take it out of the oven so that it doesn’t evaporate in the heat.

Oil and water don’t mix

Some people don’t like the separation that occurs when you mix an oil into some drinks. Another option is something like our TGOD (The Green Organic Dutchman) Dissolvable Powder that can be mixed into a beverage or sprinkled onto dry food.

How do I make my own?

But let’s say you already have a bunch of dry flower that you don’t want to smoke but don’t know how to use it in your cooking. Let’s talk about decarboxylation and Cannabutter.

Decarboxylation, or decarb, is the process of using heat to convert the THCA in the raw plant into THC that our bodies can process. This conversion takes place in the embers of your bowl or joint as you smoke, but in order to do the same thing for edibles, you need a few things. The easiest way is to use an oven, bake your cannabis until it’s brown then mix it into a fatty medium like butter or oil, the THC will bond with the carrier oil and it’s ready for consumption!

How long to bake it for and and what temperature will depend on the bud, how well you’ve ground it, your oven, etc. but generally it’s anywhere from 100-200℃ for 5-20 minutes. Again, the numbers will vary greatly – here’s a great beginner guide from Bon Appetite to get you started. Some people like to just do 420℉ for a few minutes out of personal preference. You may have to experiment with a few batches before you perfect it.

Then what?

So what carrier oil should you use? Is butter better than oil? Any kind of fat will do?

That’s mostly up to your personal preference, dietary restrictions and availability but anything with a high lipid content should do. Think olive oil, avocado oil… here’s a list from healthline about carrier oils – it’s referring to essential oils, but the list still works if you’re looking for a butter alternative.

AVB

If you own a dry flower vaporizer like an Arizer or Pax for example, you already have a handy tool for decarbing your bud. You may notice that as you vape your bud will turn yellowish, then orangish, then into brown, darker brown and black if you cook it too hot. When it starts getting to a shade of brown, it’s perfect decarb and in the Cannabis Community it’s called AVB (Already Vaped Bud, or Already Been Vaped – depending on your regional dialect).

AVB has already converted the THCA to THC and is ready to be mixed into butter or oil, you can even mix it with peanut butter and eat it, or mix it into fatty yogurt, you can even soak it in coconut oil and stuff it into gel capsules.

Stocking the fridge

So come The Hunny Pot nearest you to grab a bottle of ingestible oil or one of our great budget ounces that are perfect for making a large tub of infused medium that you can store (safely locked away from children in something like a Hush Box) in your fridge and throw into meals as desired.