Making edibles and infusing cannabis into your recipes can be a fun and easy process. Learning the basics allows you to turn any feast into a cannabis-infused treat.
Learning The Basics
1. Start with a base. There are several ways to infuse cannabis into food, but creating an infused oil or butter is typically the foundation of any edible endeavor. Making cannabis butter or oil is simple and it’s extremely versatile.
2. Choose the right ingredients—specifically, the main ingredient. When selecting flower to cook with, you can use any of your preferred strains. Even better, you can combine strains during the process to fully customize your experience. Do you want to whip up an infused cookie that’s part amaretto sour with just a hint of head cheese? When you’re making your own edibles, you can. Playing with combinations is fun, and the possibilities are limitless.
Decarboxylation
Decarbing your flower at home can be done in the oven at low heat. Here’s how:
1. Preheat oven to 225 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Break dried flower into small pieces and place on baking sheet in a single layer with space in-between each piece.
3. Heat in the oven for 45 minutes.
4. Remove baking sheet and let cool.
5. Once decarbed, it’s ready to bind with a fat.
Cannabutter Recipe
1 cup of unsalted butter
1/2 cup water (add more if needed)
3 grams of decarbed cannabis
Method
1. In a saucepan, bring butter, watter and cannabis to a slow simmer on low or medium heat. Add water as needed to help regulate heat and avoid browning the butter.
2. Heat on low for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally.
3. Pour the hot mixture into a glass container and use a cheese cloth to strain out the cannabis pieces from the butter. Discard leftover flower.
4. Refrigerate until the butter fully hardens. While cooling, the butter will naturally separate from the water, making it easy to lift out when cool. Discard water.
Calculate The Dosage
Calculating the accurate THC dosage and potency is vital when cooking with cannabis. Ignoring this step can create a final product that sends you into space, or one that does nothing at all. There are several online edible dosage calculators that will do this for you—and we recommend using a tool like this to avoid any mishaps. Check out howtoedible.com for a great dosage calculator and plenty of helpful recipes. If you want to give it a shot on your own, here’s the basic math.
1. Convert the flower weight to milligrams
Grams of flower x 1,000
2. Determine the estimated milligrams used in the full recipe
Weight of flower in milligrams x THC percentage of flower
3. Determine the dosing per serving
Number of estimated milligrams ÷ Number of servings in full recipe
Tip: When it comes to dosing, start at a low dose, especially as you’re learning to make edibles.
Upgrading Any Recipe
Once you have cannabutter or cannabis oil, you can use it with any recipe you’d like, including savory ones. Experiment, have fun and play with the process.
Pro Tip: Once you find the strains you like and are infusing with them regularly, you can prebatch cannabis butter or oil and keep it on-hand. Having multiple different oil or butter infusions is the easiest way to quickly mix-and-match strains in your recipes.
Why Make Your Own Edibles
The convenience and ease of premade edibles from a dispensary is handy, but if you want to experiment with making your own, it can be a fun and fulfilling process. Plus, making your own means you can customize the process from start to finish.
