Terri Ramsey Beavers You’re browsing the book aisle in your favorite store or skimming the web for your next meal idea, and you come across something unexpected — cannabis recipes!
Depending on your experience with weed and where your state stands on the topic, the fact that cannabis recipes are everywhere now could be shocking, or it may be the best news you’ve heard in years.
Cannabis edibles are gaining in popularity, but they can be expensive to buy. Using weed as an ingredient in your kitchen lets you make your own edibles by infusing cannabis into any meal.
How can you do this magical feat of gourmet meal creation? We have the details here to help you take advantage of those Pinterest cannabis recipes you stumbled upon.
1. Choose Your Cooking Comfort Level
First, you must be real with yourself about your abilities in the kitchen. Cannabis may be a magical-tasting ingredient, but it isn’t going to turn you into Martha Stewart miraculously.
Are you better at baking sweet goodies, or is whipping up a hot meal more your style? Or, if neither of those sounds like your cup of tea, do you prefer the simpler tasks, like microwaving and blending your edibles?
Cannabis recipes range from the good old-fashioned “pot brownie” classic to complicated gourmet meals. Decide your comfort level, which will point you toward the right recipe.
2. Measure Closely to Watch Tolerance Levels
The part that many amateur cannabis cooks forget about is how easy it is to over-indulge. If you’re not careful measuring your weed per serving using an edible dosage calculator, you could quickly overdose. While it’s not deadly, it’s not necessarily fun, either.
Make sure whoever plans on eating the results of your cannabis concoctions knows exactly how much weed they’re getting. If they don’t know their tolerance level yet, encourage them to start small.
Edibles react slower in your body than joints or topicals. It can take over an hour to feel the effects. By then, they may have thought they were fine and eaten more than one serving. If that happens, they (or you) could end up with a weed overdose.
3. Gather the Supplies
You’ve chosen your preferred cooking style and the recipe you want to start out with. Now, it’s time to hit the store and get the ingredients. But you’ll also need some cannabis cooking essentials.
Most cannabis recipes will require a few kitchen accessories you might not have on hand. Go ahead and check your cupboards or add these must-haves to your shopping list before you start a cannabis-infused goody:
- A weed grinder to break your cannabis down into small, consistent-sized bits (very important for getting the right edible dosage)
- A food processor
- Cheesecloth (which is basically a strainer for those tiny inedible weed bits that you don’t want to get into your recipe)
- A wooden spoon (stronger for stirring and heat-resistant)
- A large pot you’ll use to strain your cannabis into
With those accessories, you’ll be able to create just about any marijuana-infused meal from a recipe or your own imagination.
4. Pick a Strain
The next task is to decide what you want to get out of your canna-meal, then find a marijuana strain that does the job. Are you taking your finished product to a social event where you want everyone to have fun? Or are you serving it before bedtime on a Netflix binge night?
There are hundreds of variations of cannabis, so you’ll want to pick a few and play around with the different strains to get familiar with their aromas and flavors. The terpenes in the plants determine their character and colors, as well as how strong the smells and tastes are.
Opt for a Sativa strain if you’re eating your edibles during the day when you need to have energy and alertness. Indicas are the better option in the evening when you’re ready to relax.
Conclusion
Now that you have your accessories, bud, and recipe, it’s time to start having fun!
As you put your meal together, pay close attention to the edible dosage serving size. If you’re giving it to others or putting it in the fridge or freezer for storage, it’s smart to write the dosage per serving on the container.
Follow the recipe, eat your meal (one serving at a time), and enjoy the fruits of your newly burgeoning cannabis cooking skills.