Cannabis Cooking 101: Bite into Fall Flavors

[00:00:00] Ellen Scanlon: This podcast discusses cannabis and is intended for audiences 21 and over.

[00:00:12] Ellen Scanlon: Whether you’re a chef, a home cook, or just someone who loves good food, more people are choosing to swap their evening glass of wine or cocktail for a cannabis beverage. I hear from so many women that switching to a weed drink not only enhances their meal, it helps them sleep better at night. Cans.

[00:00:33] Ellen Scanlon: Delicious. Cannabis beverages come in yummy flavors like yuzu, elder flour, and lemon lavender. These are low-dose drinks and you can easily customize your experience and feel just the way you want. And now what You can try canned for yourself. They ship all across the country. Visit drink can.com. That’s drink CANN.

[00:00:58] Ellen Scanlon: And use promo code. Do the pot for 20% off your order. Try a can today and have a great time without a hangover.

[00:01:15] Chef Christina Wong: This is a whole fruit recipe. We’re not buying apple juice and boiling it or buying the apple cider. We’re going to make it from scratch. So it uses about five to six apples and you slice them into small chunks. I like to leave the peels, honestly, because there’s good vitamins and stuff in there.

[00:01:34] Ellen Scanlon: Welcome to How to Do the Pot, a podcast helping you feel confident about cannabis.

[00:01:40] Ellen Scanlon: I’m your host, Ellen Scanlon.

[00:01:48] Ellen Scanlon: You just heard from Christina Wong, a California based chef, writer, and content creator. Welcome to the first episode in our new three part series, Exploring Cooking with Cannabis. It’s all about the art and science of infusing your favorite autumn dishes with a twist. It’s a trap. I’ll talk with some amazing chefs who are here to help elevate your culinary skills and blend the flavors of the fall season with cannabis.

[00:02:17] Ellen Scanlon: The seasonal ingredient that we’re going to explore in this series is apples. I love apples and all across the country, they are super delicious right now. We polled our Instagram followers at do the pot. Thank you to everyone who responded and it is confirmed. How to do the pot fans love honey crisp apples.

[00:02:41] Ellen Scanlon: Pink lady apples were a close second. Think of this series as a starter kit for anyone looking to dabble with weed in the kitchen. Throughout the series, we’ll share useful tips to get you started and teach you how to easily infuse just about anything. I get a lot of questions about entertaining with weed.

[00:03:04] Ellen Scanlon: We’ll hear expert advice from chefs about what types of food to cook for a crowd and how to be sure you child proof your goodies. Not a cook. No worries. We’ve got plenty of fun food stories and I’m excited to announce a special apple themed giveaway. Our friends at Sackvill Co, the women run brand known for their stylish smoking accessories.

[00:03:31] Ellen Scanlon: Are offering one lucky winner, their iconic I love New York Big Apple Grinder, which has a 50 value. The three tier pop art inspired grinder features a glossy red exterior, diamond sharp teeth, and a mini shovel. As with all Sackville Co. products, the Big Apple Grinder is as stylish as it is functional.

[00:03:56] Ellen Scanlon: You can use it to prep for a picnic in Central Park or display it as a conversation starter for curious houseguests. Grinding your flour is a key step in cooking with cannabis and we’ll dive into why in this series. To enter for your chance to win the Big Apple Grinder, all you have to do is fill out a short survey.

[00:04:19] Ellen Scanlon: I’ll add the link in the show notes. In today’s episode, we’ll cover the basics, how much THC or CBD to include in your recipes and how to activate the effects of cannabis through what is called decarboxylating or decarbing. Plus chef Christina Wong shares her easy and delicious recipe for infused apple cider.

[00:04:45] Ellen Scanlon: That’s a chef’s kiss. I hope this series inspires you to have fun with the delicious bounty of autumn.

[00:05:03] Ellen Scanlon: I have some news. How to Do the Pots newsletter has moved to Substack. If you’re not familiar, Substack is a user friendly online platform designed to support writers. If you’re one of our more than 10, 000 newsletter subscribers, don’t worry, your free access will continue. And now you have an option to support our work by upgrading to a paid subscription.

[00:05:30] Ellen Scanlon: I hope that how to do the pot is a valuable resource for you. Whether you listen loyally every week, share our newsletters with your friends and family, or follow us on socials. Each of the newsletters highlights a featured podcast episode, and I’m excited to introduce a new section called Women We Love.

[00:05:51] Ellen Scanlon: It’s a celebration of inspiring women who also like weed. If you’re curious about what’s happening behind the scenes on the show, I’ll be sharing more of my favorite finds along with the products, podcasts, books, and memes that spark my creativity. If you choose to become a paid subscriber, you are directly contributing to our mission of helping women feel confident about cannabis for health, wellbeing, and for fun.

[00:06:20] Ellen Scanlon: I hope you’ll go to our website, dothepot. com or directly to Substack to subscribe. I’ll add all the details to the show notes. Thank you. I really appreciate your support for the show.

[00:06:41] Ellen Scanlon: California based Amanda Jackson’s creative flair and deep knowledge can help us all get more comfortable with cannabis in the kitchen. Her advice, don’t overthink it. Just have fun.

[00:06:54] Chef Amanda Jackson: Stay creative and stay curious. Like lean into curiosity. Don’t lean into being afraid. Lean into curiosity. It’s just weed.

[00:07:02] Chef Amanda Jackson: It’s just food. A lot of us, especially those of us of color, like we come from a long line of cooks, like culinary school didn’t necessarily teach a lot of us how to cook, but it did add language. Meanwhile, the vast majority of this I’ve learned on the job and with my elders. We have to be really careful.

[00:07:20] Chef Amanda Jackson: I think about not being gatekeepers and not allowing information to act as gatekeepers. If you’re not a chef and you are not like doing some Michelin type shit, who cares? Another big part of this is setting the vibe and knowing exactly what you’re making your butter or your oil for. Are you making this to put in cookies to eat before bed?

[00:07:38] Chef Amanda Jackson: Are you making this for a salad to have on your lunch break? So, you know, it just depends on really what you’re doing and what you’re going for.

[00:07:47] Ellen Scanlon: Michelle Fox is a farmer and a sustainable chef originally from Brazil. She suggests buying edibles from a licensed dispensary to find the dose that works best for you.

[00:07:58] Ellen Scanlon: Then you can use the same ratios and measurements for your home cooked goodies.

[00:08:03] Chef Michellee Fox: Go to the store because the companies that are selling at the dispensary, they have to make sure that that milligram amount is a hundred percent correct. When you’re trying at home, you still trying to figure it out how to get that amount correct.

[00:08:18] Chef Michellee Fox: But if you buy a gummy that says 2. 5 milligrams and you eat that and you’re like, okay, I can totally handle that. Because you know, when you’re cooking at home, there’s a lot of a guessing game in a way because you, you can’t just send your cookie, uh, to the lab to get tested.

[00:08:36] Ellen Scanlon: Chef Amanda Jackson has some simple advice for how to get started.

[00:08:41] Chef Amanda Jackson: My best practical advice for home cooks is to get a cookbook. When I first started doing this, I had to like piece all of these things together on the internet. But all of these people who I used to follow on the internet who, who were giving away this information for free years ago, they all have cookbooks now.

[00:08:57] Chef Amanda Jackson: And I really do suggest like starting there because they, they start you on how to do dosages while you’re making it. So you actually learn the same process that like the rest of us do. It can be really, really daunting, but it’s really not necessarily like a super hard thing.

[00:09:14] Ellen Scanlon: California based chef Jen Felmley shares some tips that will set you up for success in the kitchen, whether you’re making a cannabis infused dish or not.

[00:09:24] Chef Jenn Felmley: My first tip primarily is making sure that you measure and cut everything before you get started. So classic chef thing, it’s called mise en place. It is this idea of getting yourself completely organized before you get started. So everything in its place is what it literally translates to. You cut everything, you measure everything, you get everything lined up, and then when you get that email, you have to respond to you.

[00:09:48] Chef Jenn Felmley: Or you get that text message, or that phone call, and you have to walk away. Well, great, you put two cups in, you’ve seen the two cups, you walk away, you come back, all of your stuff is still there, it’s still ready for you. It’s also the perfect thing for stoners with ADD, because it’s all all there. You know exactly what you need to do, and when you like decide you have to clean the kitchen floor and then go back to measuring stuff, you’re like, where was I?

[00:10:10] Chef Jenn Felmley: What was I doing? It’s all right there. I’ve been doing this for years, so I even like line stuff up. If I know the butter, the sugar, and the eggs are getting creamed together, I’ll put butter up top, I’ll put sugar below it, and eggs below that. And then I know each step in the order it’s got to go through.

[00:10:26] Ellen Scanlon: So what are chef’s tips for dosing your food with cannabis? Michelle Fox breaks it down. I

[00:10:34] Chef Michellee Fox: think the most important part is to master the volume of THC for CBD per recipe. I would start, start between one and 2. 5 milligram THC edibles and make sure to write it down and do test kitchen. Test kitchen is really important.

[00:10:52] Chef Michellee Fox: Try the first recipe, measure the amount of THC, figure it out how long you’re putting it in the oven, write it down like a diary. The hardest part I think is the over usage of THC. So I like to do things like, for example, if I’m making a cookie, I’ll make a couple of THC cookies, but then I’ll make the same version of the same cookie.

[00:11:15] Chef Michellee Fox: With the CBD. So then you can eat one CBD cookie, one THC cookie, and then you fill it out. I cannot express how important it is, the balance between CBD and THC when you’re consuming, because it balances each other. So if I do a 2. 5 milligram of THC, I will do a five or sometimes 7. 5 CBD. When we first started this whole revolution of eating cannabis, um, nobody really.

[00:11:44] Chef Michellee Fox: It had access to CBD. It makes a difference when you’re consuming both.

[00:11:56] Ellen Scanlon: 1906 is a cannabis brand that’s all about microdosing, which makes it easier than ever to get comfortable with weed. You don’t have to fit a certain stereotype and you don’t have to smoke to get the benefits of cannabis anymore. There are discreet and convenient ways to incorporate it into your life.

[00:12:17] Ellen Scanlon: 1906 makes edibles called drops that are as easy to take as a pill. There’s no chewing required. One of their most popular products is their Sleep Drop. It’s designed to calm your mind and body, promote drowsiness, and help you fall asleep and stay asleep through the night. And now 1906 ships nationwide.

[00:12:42] Ellen Scanlon: Women love 1906. I love 1906 and I think you will too. Visit 1906. shop today and use promo code, do the pot for 15 percent off your order. I’ll add all the details to the show notes. Thank you for supporting the brands that support our show.

[00:13:08] Ellen Scanlon: Chef Amanda Jackson shares her favorite resource for calculating the amounts of THC and CBD in your recipes.

[00:13:17] Chef Amanda Jackson: Jeff’s a 420 chef, he has a calculator, uh, you can calculate CBD or THC, one of my favorite resources and you can make literally anything. And once you do, you’ll see like, Oh, the likelihood of you just giving yourself this outrageous dosaging.

[00:13:32] Chef Amanda Jackson: Mmm, that’s a choice. If you are a person who is an experienced cannabis user, even if you’ve never had edibles, I always just start with five and kind of move up hour by hour. Cause you can always take another one, but you can’t come down like that. And actually you can, you know, have CB laying around. And something fast acting like a CBD joint or water or a tincture that will be fast acting if you are a person who’s like afraid you’re gonna get too high.

[00:14:00] Ellen Scanlon: I’ve shared this tip before and it’s a really good one to remember. If you feel too high, have some CBD around, probably in an oil tincture. Put a few drops under your tongue and you’ll feel less high and more like yourself in about 15 20 minutes. If you’re buying flour to use for cooking, you might be wondering what strain should I use?

[00:14:24] Ellen Scanlon: This is where terpenes come in. Chef Amanda explains what they are.

[00:14:30] Chef Amanda Jackson: Terpenes, it’s really more about the aromatics. I find it easier to explain terpenes to people who understand essential oils. If you know most of the names of essential oils, you’re like, oh, okay, I get it. I think that’s the easiest way to kind of explain it is a comparison to essential oils.

[00:14:45] Ellen Scanlon: When it comes to cooking with cannabis, the strain you choose can depend on a few factors. What’s available, your budget, and the dish you’re making. Chef Amanda discovered her favorite strains by approaching it like a wine sommelier.

[00:15:02] Chef Amanda Jackson: Pick it up. If they’ll let you smell it, like do that and take it home.

[00:15:05] Chef Amanda Jackson: Like that’s the one you should pick, the one that makes you go. And if they won’t let you smell it, ask the bud tender what it smells like. They usually know. I just kind of went like I was at an all you can eat buffet. And you know, once a week I literally would go and like, I get different strains until I tried them all.

[00:15:22] Chef Amanda Jackson: That’s when I learned about the smell, the terpenes, and I go, To a different dispensary after that that had different stuff and just kind of like keep trying through and like the same way, like, Somalia is keep a notebook of wines. They tasted like, I have a notebook of like, strains. I’ve tried. And that was really just me wanting to also spend the time learning about weed in a way that made sense to me.

[00:15:44] Ellen Scanlon: One of the important words you’ll hear about cooking with cannabis is decarboxylate. Chef Amanda explains what it is.

[00:15:53] Chef Amanda Jackson: It is just a really, really, really big word that means activating the THC compound in the cannabis with heat. There is a point where you actually do activate the THC the same way we speak.

[00:16:06] Chef Amanda Jackson: Bark when we smoke, but for cooking, we don’t want that burnt taste. So we’re just going to heat it enough to get to that point. And that’s all we’re doing in the oven. We’re baking it for a certain amount of time at a certain level. Like I do 2 25 for about 35, 40 minutes, and that usually is good for me.

[00:16:25] Chef Amanda Jackson: So many chefs do it in different ways, just like people cook things in different ways. You cannot skip decarb or you’re not going to get high.

[00:16:34] Ellen Scanlon: Many chefs recommend starting to cook with cannabis by using an infused oil, often coconut or olive oil. I hope these tips are helping you feel ready to cook with cannabis and please be willing to experiment a bit to get to your perfect outcome.

[00:16:51] Ellen Scanlon: When I think of fall, I think of hot beverages and apple cider is a true classic. Chef Christina Wong, who you heard from at the beginning of the show, walks us through her recipe for how to make infused apple cider.

[00:17:06] Chef Christina Wong: It makes about six servings and For the six servings, it’s about five milligrams a cup.

[00:17:12] Chef Christina Wong: And I do five milligrams just because that’s a pretty safe starter dose for anybody. You can always have more. You can always smoke more. You can make it stronger, but I like to start with five. And for the entire batch, I’ve done the math for you and you need about 30 milligrams of THC total, if that’s what you’re looking for.

[00:17:29] Chef Christina Wong: If you’re using a tincture, you just want to use about 30 milligrams worth for your entire recipe. And this is a whole fruit recipe. We’re not buying apple juice and boiling it or buying apple cider. We’re going to make it from scratch. So it uses about. five to six, um, apples and you slice them into small chunks.

[00:17:49] Chef Christina Wong: Um, I like to leave the peels honestly, because there’s good vitamins and stuff in there. It also has really nice pectin, which kind of like thickens it a little bit. And so I like to leave the peels. And then I also add in an orange. So you peel it, slice it into chunks, throw it in your pot, add in a couple of cinnamon sticks, whole cloves.

[00:18:07] Chef Christina Wong: Allspice, nutmeg. I like to use whole spices if you can because just like your cannabis, right? Like the whole nug is gonna have all of those flavors all of those Aromas and nuances if you’ve already grounded up and broken up It’s already kind of like oxidized and it’s lost some of that those terpenes So just like spices and just like your flat cannabis flour, um, whenever you can get a whole whole spice.

[00:18:31] Chef Christina Wong: It’s always going to be better. So try to throw those in. If you don’t have it, you can totally use ground. Also a little bit of fresh ginger root. I really like fresh and not powdered for this because fresh ginger root has a little spiciness in it. And that spiciness is what I’m looking for in my apple cider.

[00:18:49] Chef Christina Wong: It adds a little zing. And it’s also really good for coughs. So if you have a cough, if you’re not feeling well, you’ve got a sore throat, ginger is a really good natural cough suppressant. It’s warming, it’s hot. So if you have a cold, you want to put warm, hot things in your body to be able to expel the cold.

[00:19:07] Chef Christina Wong: It’s a little bit of like Chinese herbalism. And then I also like to add a little sprig of rosemary for a little herbalness, a little complexity in the mix, and then eight cups of water. And then the THC part is. To sweeten the whole pot is a third cup of honey or maple syrup. You can also add a little bit of simple syrup with cannabis sugar.

[00:19:26] Chef Christina Wong: If you’d like, if you want to make it non infused, you just don’t add the THC. So for this one, I like to use either the alcohol cannabis infused tincture. You can use an oil base, just know that it’s going to float on the top. So if you want to use an oil based tincture to dose it, I would recommend making the apple cider all not infused.

[00:19:48] Chef Christina Wong: And then just add the couple drops of the oil base into your mug before you drink it. And you’ll see it float on top. It’s not going to mix well. That’s okay. Just drink it like that. It’ll work. You take all that fruit, and the water, and the rosemary, and you just put that into a slow cooker, or a large pot, or an instant pot, and then you just like, bring it to a boil, reduce it to medium low, and you just simmer it.

[00:20:12] Chef Christina Wong: Let it just slow cook, and get all of those spices, extract those flavors. flavors, cook that fruit down into a mush. Once everything is soft, take it off the heat, let it cool a little bit. And if you have a masher, just smash all of that in into like it. So it’s like releases all of that yummy, like fruit liquid and flavor, and then just cover it and just let it simmer on low again for another hour.

[00:20:36] Chef Christina Wong: So it really breaks it all down after it’s done. Just let it completely cool. And then strain all of those little bits out. And then you’re left with just the liquid and that’s going to be your delicious apple cider. I would recommend put the THC in towards the end because you’re doing a low simmer.

[00:20:57] Chef Christina Wong: It’s cooking. THC tends to burn off at temperatures over 350 degrees. Now water boils at 212, so it’s pretty safe. Even if you do at the beginning, it’s not going to burn off. It’ll be okay. But if you really want to taste the natural flavors of the cannabis, which is what I really like, you want to put it in at the end because heat will degrade those flavors.

[00:21:17] Chef Christina Wong: And so you can add it in closer to the end. You’ll have a better experience with the cannabis infusion.

[00:21:24] Ellen Scanlon: To read the whole recipe and get the exact measurements, check out the link in the show notes.

[00:21:37] Ellen Scanlon: Now for today’s high five, we’ve covered a lot about cooking with cannabis, and I want to break down the top five tips to help you feel confident in the kitchen. Number one, relax and have fun. Don’t let big words intimidate you and know that you get to decide how intoxicating to make your food. Number two, consider how you want to feel.

[00:22:05] Ellen Scanlon: Do you want a cookie to nibble on that will help you get a good night’s sleep? Or would you rather make a salad dressing to spice up your dinner? Start with a low percentage of THC. And remember that when you eat cannabis, it can take one to two hours to feel the effects. Number three, pay attention to dosage.

[00:22:27] Ellen Scanlon: Start with a cookbook like The 420 Gourmet or The Art of Weed Butter. I’ll add links to them in the show notes. These chefs have done the work in the test kitchen to help you navigate how much weed to add to your dishes. Number four, cannabis is a plant, so different strains might work best to enhance particular foods.

[00:22:49] Ellen Scanlon: Think of it as another herb, then choose your ratio of CBD to THC and have fun finding a strain that appeals to your body’s unique endocannabinoid system. Try to smell it if you can. Number five, cook the weed. Decarboxylation is just heating the weed in the oven. It’s how you activate the plant to bring on the feelings of intoxication, relaxation, pain relief, or whatever you’re looking for.

[00:23:22] Ellen Scanlon: Thanks for listening to part one of our Cooking with Cannabis series. Don’t miss part two where you’ll learn all you need to know about infusing your pantry staples and we’ll share some easy to make recipes. To keep with our apple theme, we have a very funny story about those in a pinch, homemade, Apple weed pipes that maybe you tried back in the day to stay tuned

[00:23:53] Ellen Scanlon: for lots more information and past episodes, visit do the pot. com. And that’s also where you can sign up for our newsletter. If you like how to do the pot, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts. It really helps more people find the show. Thanks to producers, Maddie fair and Nick Patri. I’m Ellen Scanlon and stay tuned for more of how to do the pot.