Pesto pasta made with canna oil. Photo by Eaters Collective on Unsplash.

You can cook or bake just about anything with marijuana – brownies, pasta, omelets, french toasts, soups, salads, sandwiches – whatever the dish, it’s possible. The essential to cooking or baking with weed is mastering how to create it with canna oil or cannabutter.

However, before you do anything, you must decarboxylate the cannabis first. The most common beginners’ mistake is to grind up some weed and mix them in with the recipe. That does not work! The cannabis needs to have its composites activated through heat. This is called decarboxylation. Think about when you’re smoking pot, you have to light it with fire, thus activating the compounds of the weed.

To decarboxylate cannabis you’re going to need to place it on a baking sheet and pop it in the oven for 25 minutes to an hour, depending on the quantity, at 225 – 240 degrees. There are resources and videos online you can read and watch to do this right. Here’s a video from Leafly showing 3 different ways you can decarboxylate at home.

Once you’ve decarboxylated your cannabis, it is now ready for use to create cannabutter or canna oil – the main THC and CBD source for your edible recipes. Again, you can find many resources and videos online on how to make cannabutter or canna oil – simply do a Google search. They are simple to use and can be done on a stovetop or even a slow cooker, like a Crock-Pot – pun intended.

When the cannabutter or canna oil is ready, you can now create whatever yummy edible dish or sweets you want. Bon appetit!