We’re right in the midst of the holidays and at the height of winter. For a lot of people, myself included, this means one thing: we’re staying inside, smoking weed, and eating food. But why just smoke your weed when you can eat it too? Here’s our easy to follow recipe for making your own cannabutter to cook with!
Here’s what you’ll need:
1 Cup of Butter
10 grams of Cannabis
1 Cup of Water
Cheesecloth
Funnel
Saucepan (stovetop) or a Crockpot
Step 1: Decarboxylate Your Weed
The first step to making your cannabutter is also arguably the most important, and the most forgotten. You have to decarboxylate your weed. But just what does that mean? Contrary to what every movie with a pothead getting pulled over may want you to believe, eating raw weed will not get you high. This is because the cannabinoid present in raw cannabis is actually THCA, the acidic precursor to THC. Unlike THC, THCA is not psychoactive. THCA converts to the psychoactive THC after being exposed to heat (i.e. when you light your weed to smoke it) and this process is called decarboxylation. For the purposes of making cannabutter, we’re going to decarb the weed in the oven.
Preheat your over to 245 degrees Fahrenheit
Lay down parchment paper on a baking sheet and spread your cannabis evenly across the sheet.
Place the baking sheet in the oven for 40 minutes.
Shake the tray every ten minutes to make sure the buds are getting evenly heated.
Step 2: Grind Your weed
You’re going to want to coarsely grind your weed so that the cannabinoids can distribute through your butter evenly. You don’t want to grind your flower up too finely, or when you go to strain our the plant matter from your butter, you’ll end up with some in the final product which will make whatever you cook taste more like weed than it needs to.
Step 3: Melt Your butter
Combine your water and butter into a saucepan. The water helps to prevent the butter from burning while your cannabutter cooks.
Step 4: Add Your cannabis
Once your butter begins to melt in the pot, you can add your ground up flower to the mixture. Make sure you keep a low heat, somewhere between 160 and 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and let the butter simmer for 2-3 hours, stirring every once in a while. If your butter comes to a boil, its too hot and you need to lower the temperature.
Step 5: Strain Your Butter
Using your funnel and cheesecloth, strain the butter into a jar. You want to make sure to let the butter strain naturally as opposed to forcing it through the cheesecloth, or you’ll end up pushing more plant matter through than you need or want. Refrigerate the final butter and use in your favorite snacks and recipes!
Be careful. Accurate dosing measurements are next to impossible to determine in a home cooked scenario, so you’re going to have to perform a little trial and error until you know just how much cannabutter you want to use in your recipes. We recommend putting a little bit of butter (maybe a tablespoon) on some toast and waiting an hour to see how you feel. You can adjust your dosing from there.