How to Make Food Taste Less (or More) Like Weed
Industrial-scale edible cannabis products are becoming more widely available as adult retail sales sweep across the country (in slow motion). Once upon a time, you had to do everything yourself, but today you can consult a reliable store – if not one of the dozens of cannabis cookbooks hitting the market faster than this cake will work.
Eating weed used to be the ticket to a more intense yet unpredictable experience, but thanks to some basic science (and a scale) we can now more easily tell what’s actually in a treat by taking a bite out of a bite.
Efficiency aside, for me, a decade-old food weed researcher, there’s nothing worse than taking a bite out of a treat and tasting too many real weeds – a heavy, bitter, herbaceous note that dominates other flavors. It reminds me of the “foods” I tried to make in high school: crappy boxed pancakes sprinkled with ground grass .
Controlling the taste of cannabis in food isn’t just about hiding it. Intrepid cooks and chefs work with cannabis flavor to create delicious and free dishes that taste like weed in a good way. I spoke with two legendary cannabis chefs for more tips on how to make food taste less (or more) like weed and how to work with cannabis as a flavoring.
How to reduce the taste of weed in food
In the past, if something had a very strong cannabis flavor, chances are it was also terribly potent, and vice versa. However, this is not always the case today, with modern cannabis companies adding a much more restrained version of the “special ingredient” to their products.
Two-time author and cannabis preparation icon Monica Lo, known as SousWeed on IG, explains: “Many professional food manufacturers use distillate, a cannabis extract in which the cannabinoids are separated from the plant material, including terpenes and the characteristic flavors of a specific strain. . Most outpatient treats are made from distillate because it’s easier to control the taste, as well as the specific cannabinoid content for ease of lab testing.”
This convenience reduces the overall characteristic taste of cannabis, so not tasting marijuana is a definite possibility if you are also using distillate-type concentrates in your homemade treats. But not trying weed isn’t always a good thing, as it can lead to overindulgence (or accidental infatuation).
Marijuana chef and Netflix’s ” Made with Cannabis ” winner Liv Vasquez believes there is a price to be paid for losing all the unique elements of the flower used to create such extracts. “Extraction methods that remove all plant matter and leave mostly cannabinoids can be palatable, but it’s important to know that different extraction methods produce different effects. Removing plant matter takes away a lot of other phytonutrients and cannabinoids that can enhance the entourage effect.”
Using distillate concentrates at home isn’t exactly easy for novice cooks: they can be cloudy and difficult to emulsify unless you’re using vegetable or butter somewhere in the mix. Old-school sifted hash or kief is great for beginners – the taste can be compensated, sprinkled on any food and eaten on the spot.
How to make food taste more like weed
Some of us like the taste of the herb, but we recognize that it must be handled with reverence and attention to the dish in question. Using cannabis as a flavoring becomes really special once you master the basics of an oil infusion and can use decarboxylated cannabis flower in place of concentrates, retaining many of the flavor notes of the original variety and hopefully their unique psychoactive effects.
Monica Lo uses a sous vide machine to make her drinks . “I often have five or six infusions, each with different strains of cannabis, all brewing at the same time,” she said via email. “All you have to do is set the temperature on your sous vide machine, seal the ingredients in ziplock bags or masonry jars, and toss [them] into the water.”
According to Lo, the sous vide method invites you to play with flavors of different varieties. “By cooking sous vide at a low brewing temperature, you can retain a lot of great flavors,” she added. “You can also combine certain strains with vegetable oils and animal fats. For example, I like the pungent smell of Garlic Cookies added to lard. I will be using this infused bacon in various Asian recipes, like my mom’s XO sauce or a simple bowl of noodle soup.”
Edible tips from experts
These chefs have a few more tips for both novice and experienced chefs.
“If you don’t like the herbal flavor of infused oils,” Vasquez said, “maybe it’s because you’re mixing them with sugar. But if you try to pair those same oils with vegetables, [say] in a salad dressing, then all the flavors blend harmoniously together.”
The upcoming book , The Weed Gummies Cookbook, is a practical guide to making your own weed confections, but it also suggests not sleeping on savory. “I love infused duck fat on French fries and popcorn,” she said. “You can also infuse sesame oil for use in a variety of Asian dishes and chili oils.”
If you want to take your cannabis recipes to the next level, knowing how to handle cannabis technology is helpful. Whatever you want to make, start by learning the basics of making an infusion.