Let’s continue rolling through the first span of summer examining the possible uses for decarboxylated trim (or bud, if using it this way suits your fancy – and I 100 percent understand how it would after spending the last few evenings as an extremely mellow fellow from a gift of “just start with a half” cookies from a dear old friend who I had not seen in years).
Butter: Deeeeee-lish-ous butter, and even better than that – delicious butter that makes us happy because it gets us high. We can put it on our pancakes, slather it on the outside of a grilled cheese, plop it on a scoop of mashed potatoes, roll an ear of corn on top of an entire stick of it, get super fancy and cook up some escargots with shallots and parsley. Or you can use it as the special ingredient in a batch of baked goods – cookies and brownies, of course, being the old standbys, but think of muffins or croissants or a bread with cannabutter baked inside along with some herbs, or broccoli, or sausage, or peppers, or all of the above. Or you could simply make some toast, spread it with your cannabutter and a little honey, sit back, and wait for that moment to arrive about 45 minutes later when you walk by a mirror, stop, and smile a crooked smile at yourself.
Making yourself a batch of infused butter is approximately one-and-a-half steps less simple than last week’s recipes for oil infusions, but it should be very manageable for anyone whose culinary skills extend past the egg-boiling level.
The basic process here requires only one pan, a strainer or cheesecloth, and a bowl to pour the butter into once the infusion has taken place. First, go back to STTS from two weeks ago for the recipe to properly decarboxylize your trim; it is a simple process by which THCA is converted to THC, thereby rendering it to a form that the body can process to provide you with the high you are seeking.
The basics for this preparation are one ounce of decarbed weed, one pound of butter, and two cups of water. The fat from the butter will combine with the THC while the water slows down the heating process, allowing the combination of fat, heat, and cannabanoids the necessary time to conjoin. The ingredient volume can be scaled up or down, just maintain that 1:1:2 ratio.
Pour the water into the pan over high heat. As bubbles begin to rise, add the butter. When the butter melts and takes a liquid form, add your cannabis, and turn the heat to low. Allow the ingredients to stay over low heat for at least two and up to three hours. This will permit the THC to work its way into the butter fat. The temperature should stay low enough during this step to allow light bubbling but the ingredients should never rise to a full boil.
Once the ingredients have combined over heat for long enough to boil off most of the water, pour the entire contents of the pot into a bowl, first passing your liquid through a fine meshed strainer or a cheesecloth secured across the top of your bowl.
Transfer the bowl to the refrigerator for a few hours – long enough to give the butter time to congeal to solid form, at which time you can scoop the butter into its final container and discard the remaining water.
Voila! Cannabutter! Enjoy, and next week I’ll share recipes for two different preparations of what I believe may be the ultimate way to ingest cannabis: Tincture!
Christopher Gallagher lives with his wife and their four dogs and two horses. Life is pretty darn good. Contact him at [email protected].
