"I am a medical marijuana user and I use it for my insomnia.
I currently smoke it but I really hate doing that. How can I prepare cannabis in food and how do I know how much to use?"
On our HelloMD Health & Wellness we started to address this question as the demand for recipes and understanding how to cook with cannabis is very high! It seems that it is often a natural progression that when people smoke or use cannabis products they start to wonder how they might make an edible or an oil for themself. One word of caution however, if you do make your own products please be sure to keep the item labeled and ideally out of reach and locked away, both so you recognize it contains THC but also so a pet or child will not accidentally ingest it.
There are hundreds of ways to cook with cannabis. We created a Cannabis 101 on cooking and here I will highlight some of the most important aspects, taken from a recent published post:
"Cooking with cannabis is a little more complicated than taking the entire plant and tossing it into brownie batter. In addition to producing some unfortunate-tasting brownies nobody would want to eat, doing so would also defeat the purpose of cooking with cannabis, as the herb needs to be processed (via heat) in order to decarboxylate and become psychoactive. Left to its own devices, the human body can’t digest the THC found in raw cannabis. Because of this, most cannabis recipes require a form of cannabis extract, such as cannabutter or cannabis-infused oil.
Because cannabis is fat-soluble (stored in fat), it must always be cooked with some form of fat — like butter, an oil, or milk. This allows the compounds within the cannabis to release into the fat, maximizing the effects of the plant and creating a better-tasting edible."
As a general rule, 1 teaspoon of cannabis butter or cannabis-infused oil contains 10 milligrams of cannabis, which is a good introductory serving (people who have never used cannabis before will be more comfortable around 5 milligrams per serving). If the consumer would like to alter the serving size as they become more experienced with homemade edibles, they should be sure to start off slowly and move up gradually.
I will provide some links to some great recipes we have collected:
Tincture:
https://www.hellomd.com/health-wellness/vegetable-glycerine-tincture-recipe
Rice Crispie Treat:
https://www.hellomd.com/health-wellness/marijuana-rice-krispie-treats-recipe
Good ‘Ol Brownie:
https://www.hellomd.com/health-wellness/how-to-make-marijuana-brownies-recipe
Hope you find this helpful!
pamelahadfield
