By now you know what CBD is? If not, flip-back to a dozen articles we posted on the subject.
Ok! Let’s take CBD into the kitchen. Making CBD-infused olive oil is easy. And olive oil is the perfect food to combine a genuinely magic elixir. Olive oil is great because of the inherent flavor of it; most of the time, the distinct flavor of CBD can overpower the senses, sometimes putting people off of taking pure CBD oil. And of course, olive oil has been a go-to cooking oil for millennia, meaning the final product can be used in all sorts of recipes, something that other CBD oils can’t do as well. Come -on folks! Why spoil a delicious pasta salad with coconut oil?
From our Test Kitchens, we have discovered a unique method to make your very own high-quality CBD oil from olive oil.
As we say --- Are you ready?
To infuse a proper homemade CBD oil, you’ll need to make it from actual cannabis buds. If you don’t care about the total CBD content of the final product, you can use any variety of cannabis. But if you want to ensure that the final product is a CBD oil (rather than a THC oil), it’s important to know what strain you’re using. Start with the best high-CBD strain of cannabis. Remember: High-CBD flower is usually found in top-end marijuana dispensaries. Once you have it -- prepare your bud, whether by decarboxylate it, or you can grind it fine. The reason you need to do this is that the principle cannabinoids within cannabis have trouble being processed by our bodies unless they have been decarboxylated, which means they’ve been heated to a certain temperature. When you smoke weed, the combustion inherent in smoking decarboxylates the compounds “automatically.” If you’re using it in cooking – or in making CBD oil – you need to do it yourself. To “decarb” the bud, merely put it in on a baking sheet in the oven and set it to roughly 250˚F for about 20 to 30 minutes. You’re looking for the buds to just slightly begin to turn brown, as well as somewhat crisp. You don’t want to thoroughly cook it or burn it all. If you want to skip this step, you can finely grind your bud into a powder; this makes it a lot easier for the cannabinoids to leach out into the hot oil later in the process, allowing you to skip the decarboxylating step. Once you’ve got your bud prepared, it’s time to cook!
STEP TWO – STEEPING THE CANNABIS IN OIL The actual process of making CBD oil is surprisingly simple. First, you need to decide what type of olive oil you want to use. Extra virgin olive oil will taste the nicest (and be the most expensive), but it has a habit of developing a bitter taste if cooked at too high a temperature. Depending on your stove top, you might find that extra virgin gets burnt during the process of CBD oil production. Instead, get the highest quality, non-extra virgin (robust) olive oil you can. Then, you need to make a simple half water/half olive oil mixture in your chosen saucepan. Add your prepared CBD cannabis buds and get comfortable, because you’re going to be here for a while. Start the heat at quite a low setting, stirring the water and oil mixture constantly to ensure nothing clumps up or gets stuck to the bottom of the pan. You want to keep increasing the heat slowly, until the water within the mixture starts to approach boiling temperature. You can tell it’s doing this because tiny bubbles will begin floating to the surface in anticipation of it beginning to thoroughly cook. Once you’ve reached this point, dial the heat back a little bit and try and stick to a low boil. Your ideal temperature for infusing CBD into olive oil is in the realm of 200˚F. The key temperature you want to avoid reaching is 300˚F, as is this is where many of the cannabinoids will start to evaporate and dissipate into the air, instead of into your olive oil. Once you hit 200˚F, keep stirring and allowing the mixture to simmer gently. The reason behind combining water and olive oil is two-fold. Firstly, it makes it easier for ourselves to separate cannabis from the final product. And secondly, we’re trying to prevent the oil or the cannabis from burning. If you just used olive oil, you’d be frying cannabis! It’s great as a garnish for a burger, but not great for making CBD oil. Anyway, you’ll want to cook your water and olive oil mixture for around 30 minutes, until it looks like most of the water has evaporated away and the cannabis has begun floating to the top. Once you’ve achieved this step, you can move on to the final stage!
STEP THREE – COOLING & SEPARATING THE CBD-INFUSED OLIVE OIL Once your CBD oil has finished extracting the cannabinoids from the cannabis buds, you need to let the whole thing cool. Wait until it reaches room temperature (so you don’t burn yourself!) and the strain the infusion (using a fine mesh sieve) into a convenient storage receptacle, like a Tupperware jar with a lid. You should be left with a pot of CBD-enriched olive oil and a handful of leftover, still warm cannabis buds. Most people toss these buds out, but you can use them as garnishes or a flavor addition in several recipes (as well as cannabis-infused smoothies!). Seal the pot containing the liquid mixture and put it in the fridge for 2 hours, or overnight. Once everything is fully cooled, the olive oil will harden and coagulate, forming a layer of thick CBD oil along the top with the water completely separated out along the bottom. Merely squeeze the receptacle you’ve stored your mixture in to allow the walls of the pot to widen, and then drain away the water and discard it. That’s it! You’ve made CBD olive oil — easy enough, right!?
Final Thoughts on How to Make CBD Oil with Olive Oil Despite its complicated appearance and description, CBD olive oil is nothing more than infused olive oil with raw CBD-rich cannabis flower. With nothing more than a few simple kitchen utensils, a bit of heat, and a whole lot of patience, you can very quickly make a dispensary-worthy CBD oil. Keep your CBD-infused olive oil in a sealed container, ideally in a cool and dark place, as sunlight can degrade cannabinoids (keep it away from windows!). To consume, merely take a small amount and swallow it, or better yet, apply it under your tongue. And of course, you can cook with the CBD oil in place of any other kind of oil — all your meals will become infused with CBD goodness, as well as CBD taste! In spite of what you might have thought, it is easy to make CBD oil with olive oil. Remember: You can make CBD oil out of basically any oil type you want, but the quality, taste and preservation qualities of the final product will all be different.
Stay healthy!