CHEF 420
420 Member
Don't Throw Actual Weed into the Recipe
That's not the way it works. A lot of people say, "Oh yeah, I put a gram of Blue Dream into my brownies and they were amazing." No, they really weren't. First of all, I don't believe you, because if you're going to put the actual ground-up bud into your brownies, sure, there's going to be some form of decarboxylation that occurs, and you'll get some of the potency of the herb into your brownies. But they'll taste horrible, will give you about half the high, and take longer to take effect.
Potency Isn't Everything
Amateur edible makers will often talk about how strong their brownies are, but I don't think they really understand what that means. When I first got into this industry, I went to a dispensary with some friends who wanted to get some edibles. I was hesitant because I'd already had a bad experience with a highly potent edible that didn't taste good and I thought it was a waste of money for me. Meanwhile, my friend was like, "Oh, a 150 milligram brownie, I'll get that!" It was like $30, and I don't even think he knew what he had just bought.
If there's one message I want to get out there, it's that people need to understand that the typical dose is 10 milligrams of THC. If you want to have a good experience, you should aim for that. Buying a 150 milligram brownie doesn't mean you'll have a good time—you most likely will not. Once you understand the basics of dosing, then you can actually have a really enjoyable experience with edibles.
Pay Attention to THC Percentages and Get Your Ratios Right
You have to know the percentage of THC in the bud you're using. I cook with a lot of high CBD (cannabinol, a non-psychoactive compound also found in marijuana that is often used for medical patients) strains as well, so understanding that is also very important if you're cooking specifically for medical patients. But the thing is, you can't really have too much CBD. The worst that can happen if you overload on CBD is you might get tired and fall asleep.
The bigger issue is having too much THC, because if you are inexperienced and have too much of that, the negative effects are you might get excessive psychoactive effects —You don't want that. You have to know the percentage you're starting with, and then you have to know how thc incorporates into the butter, oil, or tinctures that you infuse it into. You also need to understand the quantity and how to deal with it when making edibles. For example, let's say you're doing a simple boxed brownie recipe that calls for a third of a cup of oil.
A quick fix would be just replacing that with a third of a cup of canna-oil. However, if you do that and you don't understand the potency of the cannabis oil you are using, you can't say how many milligrams of THC are in each brownie, you might actually over-medicate your brownies. But if you understand the potency, you can figure out something like, If I use a third of a cup of oil, each individual brownie's going to be 15 milligrams, and I don't want that. I want each of my brownies to be five milligrams, so I'm just going to make one third of that third be canna-oil, and the other two-thirds will be regular oil. You can actually use a online calculator to figure out how much oil to use based on the THC potency of the bud in order to make edibles with the potency you desire.
Cleaning Your Weed?
Let's just say you took your weed and put it into a crock pot, like a lot of people do, with some butter, oil, and let it simmer. What you're really doing, in addition to simmering all of those cannabinoids into the butter and oil, is also adding in any impurities that are in it. So anything that tastes really bad could be something as horrible as insecticides, dirt, or it could just be the chlorophyll, which also has a specific taste that's pretty powerful.
If you have taken a look at you weed with a magnifier, you will notice trichomes growing like little mushrooms all over. these trichomes are delicate and too strong of a water flow will wash away your high, I try not to wash in water beforehand. If you don't know where your cannabis comes from, and your not sure if pesticides have been used in the growing process, I use a spray bottle and gently let the water with any pesticides drip off, try not to place your weed under running water.
Don't Cook Above 350 Degrees Fahrenheit
What is the highest temperature for cooking with cannabutter? Most recipes call for you to hit 350F, and that would be fine if most ovens were precise and didn't fluctuate between ten and twenty-five degrees of where they say they're at, (All recipes are different cannabutter cookies cook at a different temperature than say, chocolate cake, make sure you fallow the recipes recommendations) Unfortunately that's not the case, and THC starts to degrade at 365 F. So if you're cooking at 350 F, you're likely going to start degrading and evaporating the THC. Use a internal thermometer and test the oven before hand, to make sure there is not a large fluctuation in temperature.
Also, when you're cooking in a pan to, say, sauté' something, you have to be very careful. Obviously people use butter and oil to sauté all the time, but if you're thinking of using canna-butter or recipes using canna oil, just be aware that you can not use it in the same way you would use anything else. When you're cooking a dish that requires a stove top, what you have to do is put the canna butter or canna oil in at the end. Basically, you shut the heat off and you mix the butter or oil around to coat everything while the pan is still hot. That way, you won't lose any of the potency.
