Cooking With CBD Oil: A Beginners Guide

There’s no limit to all the different ways you can enjoy CBD oil.

You can start your morning with a CBD-infused coffee/tea, casually vape an e-liquid throughout the day, and end the day with a CBD bath. You can apply lotions and essential oils mixed with CBD on your skin and buy CBD products for your pets, too.

But, one of the most interesting ways to use CBD is cooking it!

Bringing CBD oils into the kitchen gives you so much freedom to explore various flavor combinations and CBD amounts. It’s your chance to make the foods you love even more enjoyable and to discover new methods of using a CBD oil in your daily life.

There are certain rules to follow when cooking with CBD oil though.

Here’s everything you need to know about using CBD in the kitchen.

Keep an Eye on the Temperature

The most important rule of cooking with CBD oil is to never let it get over 200 degrees. This burns the oil. It can affect how much of a serving you’re really getting and make the flavor more bitter, too.

As such, you have to get creative when cooking CBD oil into high-temperature dishes like baking brownies or making stove-top sauces. You’ll have to cook most things at a lower temperature for a longer period of time to get the results you’re looking for. Don’t be afraid to play with various temperatures and cook times until you get your CBD recipes just right.

Try Sweet and Savory Recipes

Keep in mind that edibles don’t have to be sweets. There’s more to making CBD-based recipes than mixing a bit of oil into a brownie mix or infusing gummies.

You can make CBD-infused pasta sauces, salad dressings, and spreads. You can mix a bit of CBD oil into a standard batter when frying your food. You can even splash a few drops of CBD oil into your post-workout smoothie for an easy, tasty CBD creation.

The possibilities are truly endless, so don’t limit your CBD foods to simply sweets.

Learn the Difference Between Refined and Unrefined Oils

As you’re playing with sweet and savory recipes, make sure you double check whether you’re using refined or unrefined CBD oils.

Refined oils are better for sweet recipes. They’re not as pungent or herb-like as their unrefined counterparts, which means you’ll barely taste them when biting into a cookie or sipping your coffee.

Unrefined CBD oils are better to pair with things like rosemary, oregano, and other strong herbs. These spices carry the flavors of unrefined oils better; they create a nice flavor combination rather than a clash. Unrefined oils also tend to have more amino acids and vitamins in them.

Don’t Add CBD to a Recipe at the Last Second

When you’re cooking with CBD oils, remember to actually cook!

You don’t want to drizzle CBD on top of your salad after you’ve already mixed the dressing. It’s not smart to add it onto a plate of pasta or a bowl of oatmeal either.

The best flavor experience happens when you carefully mix the oils. You have to think about the carriers you’re using in a recipe and how the taste of your CBD will blend with the spices and ingredients.

Measure and Store Your Oils Carefully

The final piece of advice to keep in mind when cooking with CBD oils is to measure and store everything carefully. The right measurements come down to two things: how much fat a recipe calls for normally and how much CBD oil you want to use.

Fatty foods are carriers for CBD.

They help CBD oil bind and mix with a recipe so that it’s evenly dispersed, both in terms of flavor and effects. When cooking with CBD, you want to find the perfect ratio of a standard fat (olive oil, butter, milk, coconut oil) and CBD oil. You also want to take your time mixing the CBD and the fat.

If you’re baking, for example, you don’t want to use the entire recommended amount of vegetable oil or butter and then add CBD. Rather, you need to play with a 2:1 ratio, or something along those lines.

Your ratios won’t be the same for each recipe. They vary depending on what you’re making and how many people you’re making it for, so it’s best to use a “less is more” approach.

You can always add more oil to a salad dressing after tasting or make another batch of brownies that are a little stronger. But, it’s hard to fix a recipe that’s been overpowered by CBD.

As far as storing CBD goes, keep your oils in a cool, dark place. The fridge will do just fine, but the pantry isn’t the best idea. Too much exposure to heat over time will alter the potency of the oil.

Cooking with CBD Oil Made Simple

Wondering what the best ratio is when making a CBD salad dressing? Not sure if you should mix your CBD with oil or butter to make a batch of brownies?

You won’t know until you try!

The best way to think about cooking with CBD oil is to approach it like any other recipe-expect to do some tweaking until you get it down. Until then, you can enjoy a bunch of ready-made CBD treats to help spark your cooking inspiration and gauge the flavors/quantities you should be aiming for.

Click here to discover all the CBD edibles we have available.