cannabis food nature herb concept spaghetti carbonara with cannabis leaf marijuana

cannabis food nature herb concept spaghetti carbonara with cannabis leaf marijuana

What Are Some Tips To Cooking With Marijuana?

Byking_adm on July 24, 2021

Cooking with marijuana is one of those things that takes a while to learn. A lot of people think that cooking with cannabis is as simple as just adding ground cannabis to their favorite recipe, but there is a lot more involved in just that. Any recipe needs to be followed in order to enjoy the outcome as much as you can, and with cannabis, you have to make sure that every step is adhered to.

Getting the right information on cooking marijuana can be difficult. Sometimes it seems that every single article you read is different from the next, and that can cause a lot of confusion. Hopefully after you’re done reading this article on cooking with marijuana, you’ll have a better idea of exactly what’s involved.

Cooking With Cannabis

Cooking with cannabis is something that can be very fulfilling. It’s also something that can be quite time-consuming if it’s your first time trying it out. Follow these tips for cooking with cannabis:

Selecting Your Strain

The first step to cooking with cannabis is figuring out what strain you’re going to use. You’ll want to do a bit of research on indica and sativa strains so that you know what to expect.

After you’re more educated on the effects of each strain, you can proceed to the next step.

Cannabinoid Content

Most people don’t think about the science of cannabis when they are consuming it. Cannabinoids are the compounds in weed that interact with receptors in your brain. CB1 and CB2 receptors are the two main receptors that THC will bind to, leading to the psychoactive effects.

After you consume a weed-infused edible or beverage, the cannabinoids will interact with the cannabinoid receptors in your brain, and these are just a few of the cannabinoid receptors that make up the endocannabinoid system in the body.

THC and CBD are the most common cannabinoids in cannabis. THC is the cannabinoid that will result in the psychoactive effects that people experience. CBD won’t lead you to experience psychoactive effects but helps people with things like:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Pain
• ADHD

If it’s your first time doing any type of cooking with marijuana, you’ll want to ensure the cannabinoid content of the strain you’re using.  Using a strain that contains too much THC can result in you getting far too high, and that will result in you feeling very uncomfortable. CBD can do the same, but to nowhere near the same extent that THC can. If you’re getting your cannabis from a dispensary, always make sure to ask the budtender what cannabinoid content is in your weed.

Know What To Expect

Consuming cannabis in edible form is much different than consuming it through smoking it. One of the biggest differences between consuming weed through an edible and smoking weed is how long the high will last. When you smoke weed, you’ll experience the high much more quickly in comparison to eating a weed gummy, brownie, or beverage.

You can think of smoking cannabis like getting into a Lamborghini and pushing the pedal to the metal, whereas eating a cannabis edible can be thought of as getting in a Toyota Corolla and not being able to move nearly as fast.

The thrill of smoking cannabis doesn’t last anywhere nearly as long as consuming cannabis in edible form. Smoking cannabis can result in a high that will last around an hour. Edibles can last between 5 and 10 hours. Because of that, you’ll want to plan out your day a little more if you’re thinking about consuming edibles. No one wants to be going into work blazed out of their minds because they didn’t expect the high to last 8 hours.

If you’re cooking with marijuana and ingesting edibles, you’ll want to wait about an hour before consuming another one. Sometimes people don’t wait this long and wonder if the edibles are even working at all and will consume another two to make up for it and then later experience very unpleasant symptoms two hours later when everything hits them at once.

Raw Weed

Adding raw weed to your edible recipes won’t result in the psychoactive effects that you experience when you light it up. Weed needs to be decarboxylated in order to produce these effects, and most people don’t even think about that reaction because their lighter just does the job for them. With edibles, you don’t have a lighter or source of heat to decarboxylate the weed, so no psychoactive effects will occur unless you put the cannabis in the oven beforehand. 

The weed that you purchased at your local dispensary will already be dried and cured, so you typically don’t have to worry about doing that.

Decarboxylating Your Cannabis

Decarboxylating your cannabis can be thought of as unlocking your weed. When people are considering cannabis edible recipes, they get scared off after reading this word. While it might seem a little complicated at first, the process is actually quite simple and every edible requires this process to be done. To decarboxylate your weed, all you have to do is place it in the oven for over an hour at 230 degrees.

Grinding Your Cannabis

Grinding up your cannabis is another crucial part of making good edibles. With ground cannabis, more of it is able to be spread around your recipes, making every bite of that brownie that you make, able to produce psychoactive effects.

The trichomes are the part of cannabis where most of the cannabinoids are, so you’ll want to ensure that the trichomes are spread throughout your recipe as much as possible. 

Cannabutter

One of the most efficient ways to get cannabinoids spread throughout your recipes is by using cannabutter or canna oil. These aren’t some complicated substances, they are either butter or oil that is infused with cannabis.

Using cannabutter or cannabis can make your recipe ten times easier, and the more cannabis edible recipes that you look at, the more you’ll notice cannabutter or cannabis being used in them.

Quality

When you’re making cannabis edible recipes, the number one thing to focus on is quality instead of quality. Sure, you can make 5 batches of your favorite recipe with a small portion of cannabis, but this won’t result in nearly as strong of a high in comparison to using that small portion of cannabis in only one batch of brownies.

In addition, you’ll always want to know the THC content in the cannabis that you’re using for your recipes. Some people jump the gun and begin making edibles with any type of cannabis they can get their hands on and later experience unpleasant symptoms as a result of accidentally using cannabis that’s too potent. No one wants to go through a negative experience when their entire goal of consuming cannabis edibles is to have an enjoyable one. 

If you’re purchasing your cannabis at a dispensary, always make sure to ask what the THC content is. Some people also like to ask things like:

• Were fertilizers used?
• What about pesticides?
• Any other chemicals I should be aware of?

Dosing is extremely important with cannabis edibles. If you’re going to be distributing your edibles to friends, you don’t want them to end up having a bad experience or a bad trip because of your negligence in not dosing your recipe properly.

Final Thoughts

Following these tips will ensure your cannabis edible experience will be more enjoyable. While it can initially take a while to learn how to make good edibles for the first time, you’ll get better at it the more you do it, just like everything else in life.