Welcome to our Cannabis Kitchen where we’ll be discussing cooking with cannabis.  Serious consideration of medicinal use for marijuana must include the development of an appropriate and non-destructive delivery system. 

When most people hear about medicinal products their minds go back to the gritty, chewy, green brownies, cookies, lasagna, or curry they tried back in the day.  While it may or may not have been fun back in the day, for true medicinal use ingestion by eating is much healthier for the patient than smoking.  Drawing a bunch of smoke into your lungs for any reason isn’t very healthy for you, even if it is the fastest way to experience the effects of the medication.

Each week we’ll be posting recipes, adding cooking tips, hints and ideas for your use.  Our focus here is providing quality recipes that will allow patients to prepare their own food stuffs with medication.  Many of our recipes are “dosage” size.  We have chosen to stay away from the traditional sweets such as cookies and brownies as those baked goods and have many savory recipes for folks to try.  Our favorite is Sacred ghee.

More than just clarified butter, ghee cooks longer and hotter, leaving the butter with a rich tannish brown color.  Clarified in the process ghee is easily combined with marijuana that has been forced through a food mill (pulverized) and then strained through a cheesecloth.  While researching our recipes for medicinal purposes we focused on cultures that have been using marijuana for millenia.  Yes, we Americans think we have the lead, but in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan the mountain people have been slowly roasting ripe buds near their campfires and then dipping the buds in honey, eating the sweet treat as a dessert for literally thousands of years. 

Today we’ll be discussing some of the ways to prepare your marijuana for ingestion by eating.  While the Afghan honey buds may well be a nice treat, it is messy, and uses a lot of marijuana.  However, there are ways to prepare your marijuana that make it much more conducive for producing foodstuffs that are edible and don’t feel like you are chewing on sticks and leaves.

First, make sure your marijuana is cured.  Using green bud for cooking isn’t going to be very helpful.  Here at Green Jeans we only use bud and jar shake in our cooking. 

Second, using fully cured for 30 days stock, the bud is then placed in the oven and roasted at a very low heat (we use the lowest setting on our oven at 170 °F).  You don’t want the plant material to smoke, you want to gently toast them to where they are looking more golden than green.  DO NOT BURN!  Stand right there at the oven and open the door every 20-30 seconds after the first minute…this doesn’t take a lot of time.

Third, clean, mill and pulverize the “toasted” marijuana.  We use a standard food mill.  (Remember the good old for each two circles clockwise, reverse to counterclockwise every third crank – this prevents things from getting too stuck and allows you the opportunity to get out the smaller pieces of stem.)  Once pulverized the marijuana can be stored in the freezer (a dark glass jar is best) for up to two years and will still retain potency. 

Now you have marijuana that is ready to use in any recipe! Whether it’s a butterball tea or cannabis cheesecake, or sacred ghee your marijuana is in the proper form for use in edibles!

Next week we’ll be discussing cooking equipment and pan types … using the correct equipment sure makes a huge difference in making sure the job is done right.