The first step in your home made edible adventure.
The first step in your home made edible adventure.
Nut butters, guacamole, cheese, gummies, cake, cookies, and of course brownies. The world of edibles has expanded further than ever before. This is due in part to the recent legalization of marijuana in multiple states pushing cannabis and cannabis products into the mainstream. It seems every day there are new edibles you can purchase, and even more recipes being published every day.
Although you can pick up your favorite edible at your local dispensary (for those of you in legalized states), its always more fun to make them at home. You get to control the dosage, play around with the recipe a little, and just go a little crazy.
If your excited to start making your cannabis-infused food stuffs this article has been designed to help you get started on how to cook your own edibles at home.
A quick little intro to edibles and cooking with cannabis
Cannabis-infused foods are called edibles, and they are foods that have been infused with the marijuana derived compounds THD and CBD.
Edibles are great for those that do not have any interest in smoking or vaping marijuana, but still want to enjoy its properties. There are a wide variety of edibles currently on the market and in recipes, cannabis-infused chocolates, pot brownies, weed cookies, gummies, weed tea, even hot sauces are getting the cannabis treatment. It is possible to make almost any food into a cannabis-infused edible with a potency that suits you.
How to cook or bake your own edibles.
In order to start making your own edibles at home it is important to understand the process of decarboxylation. What decarboxylation basically means is that you need to heat up your marijuana in order for it to produce the THC and CBD for your body to absorb. This happens naturally when you smoke or vape weed from the lighter or coils in your vape.
Therefore, in order to make edibles your cannabis will need to be heated in order to decarboxylate and produce the THC for your body to absorb. You will do this for cooking and baking cannabis-infused foods, but at a lower temperature so that the plant (or parts of it) stay intact while being infused into your base ingredient such as oil or butter.
How to store your edibles after you’ve made them.
If you’re contemplating making a pan of pot brownies you may be wondering what you are going to do with the leftovers. No matter what type of edible you make, brownies, cookies, pasta sauce, anything you can make cannabis-infused really, it will be stored the same way as its non-cannabis counterpart. Everything you make will have the same shelf life of its non-cannabis counterpart. Your pot brownies will go bad at the same time as a pan of regular brownies.
If you want to keep your weed edibles as fresh as possible as long as possible it is best to store them in a sealable bag (preferable a vacuum bag) or a good container. For your baked goods you can place them inside of the refrigerator to extend their shelf life.
Keep in mind though, you can eat a stale cookie, it may not taste to good, but you will get high from it. For up to six months there will still be THC in your edibles. Just keep an eye out for mold on any home-made foods, with or without weed.
For morale, and of course legal, reasons you must always keep your edible out of the reach of children that are in or around your home. Label all of your edibles and infused cooking goods, this will help avoid confusion and keep everyone happy.
How to measure dosage for edible baking
If you are just getting started on making edibles at home it is recommended that you start with just a small amount of marijuana when making your base cannabis-infused ingredient, oils, butters, fats, or any other base ingredient.
Most cannabis recipes will call for a 1:1 ratio of baking ingredients to cannabis. For example, if a recipe calls for 1 cup of butter it will also call for 1 cup of ground marijuana. However, if this is your first-time making edibles, use less. The worst possible outcome is that you will not have as strong an edible as you had hoped for.
As you progress in your edible cooking adventure make sure you write down how much weed you used so that you can adjust the recipe from time to time. Although you may be proud of your memory, and you think you will remember how much weed you put in, after a few edibles you will probably forget, we all do.