Marijuana edibles are great tasting additions to any table. They are healthy and they lend variety to daily fare. Here are ten tips that you can put to use when cooking with marijuana. These will bring out the flavors in the foods and add zest to your palate.
1. Do not grind the plant matter excessively when making marijuana butter and cannabis oil.
Edibles taste better when the marijuana infused butters and oils are made from a relatively coarsely ground paste, one that has not been ground too fine. The resinous trichomes that yield flavors are on the buds and leaves and not inside them. Grinding the greens too fine releases other herbal flavors into the butter. If you want those flavors then feel free to go ahead and use a fine grinder. There are many such grinders available in the market. But, if you’ve always been grinding the plant matter fine and want infusions that are not overly green in color and do not carry too many extraneous flavors then give the above idea a try. You will discover tastes that would have earlier been buried under other flavors.
2. Remember to add water when making cannabis butter and marijuana oil.
Adding water lets you create an infusion at a lower temperature. Without water, you will perforce carry out the cooking at a higher temperature. This affects the delicate flavors that you’d otherwise experience. The THC is destroyed because of the high temperatures. The water dilutes the overbearing herbal flavors and reduces the overt greenness of the infusion. The amount of water added should be as much as butter or oil used. This also improves the yield. You get a higher yield of tastier infusions.
3. Decarboxylate the cannabis.
This is an important step because it increases the amount of THC that is extracted. Decarboxylation is required because uncooked cannabis contains THC-A. When THC-A is exposed to heat, it breaks down to THC that gives you the kick you seek. During infusion, the heat from the cooking process will take care of the decarboxylation process. As mentioned above, prior heating of raw cannabis, particularly when using kief, increases the THC yield. Pre-heat the greens to 250 degrees F in an oven for 20 minutes.
4. Consume safe amounts.
Overdosing on marijuana, while not fatal, can leave you giddy, nauseous, and even paranoid. Overconsuming marijuana added to edibles is a risk and it happens when you do not feel the effects you seek. Most people overeat cookies, cakes, and other items thinking that they need to eat a little more. They do not take into account the fact that marijuana in edibles takes time to make its effects felt. And by the time the effects appear, they’ve eaten more than they should have. You nee to know your capacity for consuming weed-laced foodstuffs. It may be more or less than that of your friends. There is no sense in entering a competition here. As a rule of thumb, you may want to smoke a little weed to get an idea of its potency before you use it for cooking. Or, ask around. Check online. Learn. Do this especially for strains that you are unfamiliar with. With edibles that turn out more potent than what you had expected, you can keep the effects in check by consuming less of these.
5. Use enough marijuana.
Because if you don’t, you’ll be left feeling underwhelmed with the whole experience. If you’re cooking with cannabis to get a buzz then you need to add enough to the food items. If you prepare a lot that is weak, you can consume more. If the infused butter or oil turns out weak, you can always heat it and add some pre-heated weed to it in order to bolster the THC content. With a little trial and error and knowledge about your own tolerances to your favorite cannabis strains will enable you to cook batches with just the right amount of weed that gives you a buzz and also yields medicinal benefits.
6. Calculate the portions.
Sounds like a common-sense thing to do, but if you do not do it then you won’t know the right amount of weed to add or oil to use in the recipe. So, always keep the portion size in mind. Know how many portions the recipe is for. You also need to know the amount of weed that does the trick for you. You can add or subtract from the amount in the recipe to get a mix that’ll give you a buzz.
7. Cook with kief.
Kief, obtained by dusting off the resinous trichomes from the buds and leaves, is a fine powder and opens up entirely new vistas of cooking with weed. You can prepare delicious and stronger cannabutter with kief than you can with hash. Kief has its own flavor profile that blends with many foods. It does not have the herbal and green flavors that weed-infused butter and oil do. It dissolves nicely in warm and cold liquids. You can work with a wider range of bases – curd, mayonnaise, sour cream, etc. On the other hand, cooking with hash requires a little more skill because the stuff comes in different textures – dry, putty-like, and crumbly. You need to adapt the cooking and doses to the type of hash you are using.
8. Don’t hold back on the seasonings
You will discover that a more liberal use of seasoning and using condiments with the edibles will help mask the strong herbal overtones of cannabis. Your palate may be accustomed to delicate flavors but when it comes to cooking with marijuana, stronger flavors work better.
9. Cook at the right temperature.
Low temperatures work best for cooking with marijuana. High temperatures degrade THC and release undesirable flavors. At 392 degrees F, THC is totally destroyed. Low temperatures preserve flavors. This is one of the reason why the flavor profile of weed strains is better appreciated when the substance is vaped instead of smoked. Using water when preparing an infusion lets you regulate the temperature. Exercise care when cooking with marijuana concentrates and oils. Avoid frying or sautéing in these oils. Add the oils or butter to the batter, and then bake. You can safely bake at temperatures up to 375 degrees F. The food does not get heated to the oven temperature.
10. Go beyond cookies and brownies.
You can make more than just sweets with marijuana. Once you begin cooking with marijuana, you must explore dishes and come up with ideas. Let your creativity flower. Do you know that most foods are very amenable to being flavored by cannabis? Savory foods can easily mask the herbal taste that often deters people from cooking different dishes with cannabis.
