Cooking with CBD

There are many ways to consume CBD, some of the more popular methods being smoking, vaporizers, and edibles! Due to the increasing legality of cannabis and cannabis by-products, it’s now easier than ever to buy CBD oil. While the oil can be used in a wide range of products, like skin and hair care products, it’s perfect for cooking and making your own edibles too! To be sure you’re going about cooking your own CBD edibles safely, take a look at some of our pointers to ensure you have the best experience and results possible.

Buy from a Reliable Source

When shopping around for CBD oil, one of the most important steps is doing the research to ensure you’re buying from someone reliable, who has a solid reputation and positive reviews. A quick Google search will lead you to tons of sellers, but many of these sources might not offer CBD oil that is pure, reliably tested, or accurately measured. Take the time to look at multiple brands/sources, and look for things such as: where the hemp is sourced from, extraction methods, bioavailability (the proportion of a drug or other substance that enters the circulation when introduced into the body and so is able to have an active effect), and greenwashing tactics (when a seller’s lie to consumers about environmental practices or benefits of a product).

Know Your Ingredients

To prepare for utilizing CBD oil in your cooking, you need to understand what ingredients you’re using and how they might mix with or affect the oil. A good starting point is looking for a recipe that calls for either an oil or fat based ingredient, like butter, to mix the CBD oil with. However, if you’re cooking something that does not need those ingredients, you can also mix the cannabis concentrate with small amounts of liquor like rum and vodka; just avoid anything water based.

Start with a Test Batch

Initially, you should not only use a relatively small amount of CBD oil, but you should also prepare a small amount of whatever food you are making. This is important because you need to see how it affects you and tastes; once you’ve experimented and found what works for you, you can utilize more oil in larger quantities of food.

Pay Attention to Temperature

Another thing to keep in mind when cooking with CBD is the temperature needed to make the food you want – CBD oil starts to evaporate around 320 degrees. When choosing a recipe, take a look at the temperature the food needs to be cooked at in order to be safely consumable and to ensure your CBD will still be there when the food is done cooking. The lower the temperature used when cooking, the more CBD will still be present when it’s done.

Store it Correctly

Many people just starting out with CBD might not realize that it’s heat and light sensitive. In order to avoid any issues with your food like the taste changing, or the CBD becoming ineffective or even evaporating, you need to take care when storing it. Ideally, a dark, cool place would be the best spot to store your CBD edibles.