How to Cook with Cannabis: 9 Easy Recipes for Beginners

Why Cooking with Cannabis?

For some folks cannabis is left to smoking or vaporizing. However, there is another culinary world where flavor, aroma, and cannabinoids are combined for a slow and mindful cooking experience. Cooking with cannabis allows you to control your dosage, exercise your creativity, and bypass the negative effects of smoking on your lungs.

Decarboxylation: The First Step

You can’t just use cannabis raw and sprinkle it into anything you want to eat. To unleash the potential of THC and CBD, the cannabis flower must first go through decarboxylation:

• Preheat oven to 110 –115 C (230 – 240 F)
• Spread ground cannabis evenly on parchment
• Bake for 30 – 40 minutes stirring occasionally.

This method converts THCA (biologically inactive) into THC (biologically active), thus making the edibles effective.

Beginner Recipes

Cannabis-Infused Butter (Cannabutter)

• Melt butter on low
• Combine decarboxylated cannabis with butter.
• Simmer for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally.
• Strain and cool.
• Use with baked goods or pasta.

Cannabis-Infused Cooking Oil

• Infuse olive oil or coconut oil with cannabis.
• Heat gently in a double boiler for 2 – 3 hours.
• Strain and store.
• Use for salad dressing or sautéing veggies.

Cannabis Tea

• Combine simmering butter with cannabis or heat in coconut milk (to bind cannabidiol with the tea).
• Add honey or spices to taste.

Important Safety Notes:

• Start with 2 – 5 mg THC per serving.
• Wait 90 minutes before using more.
• Be sure to label infused food products clearly; now you can take away the babysitting job of your friends/family.

Ideas for Expanding Your Culinary Palette

Once you have mastered the basics of cannabis cooking, you can incorporate it into just about any type of cuisine. It is easy to think of infused olive oil for anything Mediterranean, cannabis-infused ghee for Indian curries and syrups for dessert items.

Cannabinoids in the body work especially well with rich high-fat foods that target the lungs because of the fat components.

Cooking with cannabis also has a different social experience. Sharing a meal together is more intimate and slow-paced than sharing a joint and creates a space to have more profound conversations. Many connoisseurs report that the food experience brings a better body high that lasts longer than smoking.

Find more news and insights on cannabis in our cannabis news blog.