How to Make Edibles at Home

Extracting the therapeutic properties of cannabis and getting the best out of your home-based edibles experience may be challenging for newbie cooks. After following these 12 easy steps should have no trouble getting started!

How to Make Edibles at Home

1. Select Your Cultivar.

The first step in the process of making your edibles at home is to select the perfect cultivar that you want to cook with. This is, of course, assuming you have a choice in which cultivar to purchase at a legal dispensary. If this isn’t the case, you can skip to step 2.

There are factors that you should consider when doing so, such as:

• What flavor profiles would you like to accent your food?
• What effects do you want to have after eating?

Selecting the cultivar you want to use for cannabis cooking is a luxury we have thanks to legalization. Up until circa 2016, cannabis home cooks were limited to the choices of cannabis they could acquire. These choices have multiplied endlessly, with the choices of which cultivar (flower) to use alone will require selecting one from thousands of options.

2. Select Your Ingredients.

If you make your cannabis oil or butter the right way, you can make any dish you want. Keep in mind that your selected cultivar might have a flavor profile that it will add to your dish. The taste of eating cannabis is typically either a love/ hate thing: you either love eating cannabis or you don’t care for it.

One of the most common ways to incorporate cannabis into home cooking is to make cannabutter. Straining out all of the excess plant matter isn’t the easiest task, however, especially for newbies.

A good batch of cannabutter must be stirred for a solid two hours minimum, and it’s always a good idea to monitor it as closely as possible because butter burns quickly and easily. Additionally, spills are common, and cleaning up butter off of the kitchen is something no one enjoys.

Some of the best “canna-chefs” view cannabis as just another herb to add flavor and depth to their dishes and improve upon high-end cuisine. With, of course, some excellent side effects involved. If you’re up for the challenge, maybe you can try your hand at doing just that. The first step is to select your base oil or butter.

3. Select Your Base Oil.

Cannabis is not water-soluble, it’s oil-soluble. For this reason, oils that are high in fat, such as canola or coconut, tend to work well for newbie home cannabis cooks.

4. Grind Your Cannabis.

The next important step is to grind your cannabis to medium ground. We recommend using a grinder for this. If you don’t have one, consider getting a metal one, you can purchase one for under $20 usually. We recommend against using plastic grinders.

You can also use a coffee grinder or food processor to grind your cannabis flower as well, as you are in the kitchen after all. Just remember that your morning coffee will probably taste like some cannabis for a few weeks afterward.

5. Mix Your Cooking Oil and Ground Cannabis Together in a Cooking Device.

If you’re a slow cooker kind of cook, we recommend trying this method. Slow cookers are great for everyday cooking, and getting comfortable with using one for your cannabis cooking is a great idea. If you’re not a slow cooker person, a saucepan is just as effective.

For several of us here at the HashDash platform, we love using our slow cookers (aka Crock Pots) for a variety of dishes: including soups, stews, chicken and veggies, and vegan fall chili. The great part about making your cannabis cooking oil at home is that you can apply that oil to any dish you wish, the sky's the limit!

Mix your cooking oil and flower until the flower is submerged in your cooking oil. If you’re like us and tend to not follow recipes, a general rule of thumb is to eyeball 3 parts oil to 1 part cannabis. This will work well for one recipe, but if you’re serving multiple courses, you may want to go with 5 parts oil to 1 part cannabis so you don’t knock out your dinner guests.

During this process, the cannabis should dissolve into the oil entirely. This should be a medium heat that doesn’t scorch the buds. Understanding that we need to dissolve medium-ground flower on medium heat is great about modern-day legal cannabis.

Circa the 1960s and 70’s when bud brownies started to become popular, people didn’t understand how to blend and grind their flower. As such, there would often be large chunks of flowers in undercooked brownies. This is no longer the case thanks to expert canna-chefs.

6. How to Decarboxylate.

Another crucial thing cannabis home cooks have learned over the years (thanks in large part to legalization) is the importance of decarboxylation. Decarbing means that a home cook will apply low and slow heat for several hours. This process converts the non-psychoactive cannabinoid THCA into the THC that consumers know and love. If you don’t decarb your edibles at home, their potency will be very minimal if existent at all.

7. Strain It and Shelf It.

Once you’ve decarbed and dissolved, you will want to leave your cannabis in your slow cooker for a minimum of 6 hours on low heat. This is why slow cookers tend to work so well for newbie canna-cooks because they are “set it and forget it” devices that heat food evenly and steadily. Some cannabis cooks will let their dishes set for up to 2 whole days. But for your first cooking experience, 6 hours in the slow cooker is enough.

During this cooking time, you’ll be decarbing. Decarbing is the process of turning THCA into the sought-after THC. For a simple method of decarbing before you cook, be sure to read our Decarb chapter.

When you’re done with your cannabis dish, it’s time to strain. Be sure to strain it immediately when it’s done, while it is still hot. Use a wire strainer for the bigger chunks of flower and if you have one, a cheesecloth for the finer ground flower. Use several layers of cheesecloth and place it over a salad bowl secured with rubber bands.

8. More On Your Cannabis Slow Cooker.

If you’re a slow cooker kind of cook, we recommend trying this method. Slow cookers are great for everyday cooking, and getting comfortable with using one for your cannabis cooking is a great idea. If you’re not a slow cooker person, a saucepan is just as effective.

Mix your cooking oil and flower until the flower is submerged in your cooking oil. If you’re like us and tend to not follow recipes, a general rule of thumb is to eyeball 3 parts oil to 1 part cannabis. This will work well for one recipe, but if you’re serving multiple courses, you may want to go with 5 parts oil to 1 part cannabis so you don’t knock out your dinner guests.

During this process, the cannabis should dissolve into the oil entirely. This should be a medium heat that doesn’t scorch the buds. Understanding that we need to dissolve medium-ground flower on medium heat is a great thing about modern-day legal cannabis.

Circa the 1960s and 70’s when bud brownies started to become popular, people didn’t understand how to blend and grind their flower. As such, there would often be huge chunks of flowers in undercooked brownies! Not a super pleasant experience. Nowadays, we know a lot more, thankfully. And this is another reason why today’s edibles are more potent than ever, it’s science!

9. Cannabis Recipes: Baking.

As is the case with sauteing and slow cooking, you can simply use your cannabis butter or oil for just about any baking recipe you’d like to try. Just use your canna-butter at a 1:1 ratio with just about any recipe you can think of. Cannabis brownies are typically the best-known edible at this point, but baking with cannabis can go well beyond brownies.

We do recommend against basting or roasting in your oven as a novice cannabis baker. You risk burning the THC in your cannabis at high heat before it’s finished. We baked goods, however, the THC is insulated by the ingredients such as milk, eggs, brownie mix, and so on.

10. Cannabis Gummies: Edibles on the Go.

There’s a reason why cannabis gummies are so popular on dispensary shelves. Not only do they usually taste good, but they are also totally easy to carry with you on the go and are as discreet as you can get.

Perhaps the most important ingredient when making cannabis gummies is lecithin. Lecithin is an oil and fatty substance extract that binds your oil and gummies gelatin concoction together to help keep the THC potency at its peak. Two of the most common bases for lecithin are soy and sunflower, made from their respective oils.

Another ingredient that’s essential for making gummies is gelatin, better known by its brand name Jell-O. Unflavored gelatin is also typically used in most homemade gummies recipes. The other ingredients most of us have in our kitchens right now: including coconut or sunflower oil, and corn syrup.

11. Create Your Own Recipes at Home.

And now, comes the fun part! Take everything you learned above and apply it to making your cannabis recipes. You can get creative or you can keep it simple. We always recommend taking things low and slow and avoiding high heat if at all possible, to maintain the potency of your cannabis.

Share Your Cannabis Cooking Experiences.

One of the last things we highly recommend doing when you’ve whipped up a batch or two of infused foods is to share your cooking experience. If you’re not engaged with cannabis-cooking social media accounts, this is a good place to start.

Sharing your cannabis dishes is going to be just like doing so with any of your food, with the key difference being the presence of the plant flower. Be sure to take well-light photos and try to share your recipe in your social posts.

Doing so will allow hopefully constructive feedback so you can improve on your infused dishes in the future. If you do this and are inspired by this guide chapter, we’d love to hear about it.

Go Forth and Cook With Cannabis

It has never been easier for home cannabis cooks to create their own infused dishes at home. In case you’re wondering, you can add cannabis oils and concentrates to your dishes, but this requires different cooking methods and ingredients.

Extracting the therapeutic properties of cannabis and getting the best out of your home-based edibles experience may be challenging for newbie cooks. All it takes is some practice and a little research, and you will soon find that cooking with cannabis at home can save money and be a very fulfilling experience.

What We Learned: How to Make Edibles at Home

Making your own edibles is one of the most interesting and rewarding experiences of being a cannabis consumer. Here’s what we learned in our How to Make Edibles at Home chapter:

• Extracting the therapeutic properties of cannabis and getting the best out of your home-based edibles experience may be challenging for newbie cooks.
• Cannabis is oil soluble, meaning high-fat oils like canola or coconut can work well for new home cannabis cooks.
• Selecting your cultivar is the first step in the process of making your own homemade edibles.
• Once you’ve selected your source cultivar flower, the next step is to select your base oil and grind your cannabis with a grinder.
• After mixing your cooking oil and ground cannabis together in a cooking device, it’s time to decarb.
• After decarbing, it’s time to strain it and shelf it.
• Cannabis gummies are popular because usually taste good, are easy to carry with you on the go, and are discreet.
• Sharing your cannabis dishes on social media will allow hopefully constructive feedback so you can improve on your infused dishes in the future.

You’ve reached the end of the Cooking with Cannabis Guide! The future is bright for the wonderful world of cannabis edibles, and now you have a solid jumping-off point to begin making your very own!

Answer the question below and officially complete this Guide. Happy canna-cooking!