Going out to the movies or a posh dinner on the town always makes for a phenomenal date night but sometimes we can crave more intimacy. How do you create a relaxing and romantic night at home without falling into rut? Try cooking with cannabis!
Crafting a romantic cannabis meal can inspire open communication, lift stress or tension that has built up from the day and even heighten sexual experience for both parties. Picture a savory warm meal and snuggling on the couch. Cannabis is a natural pair to an intimate romantic relationship as it can heighten our ability to connect with others emotionally.
To help you impress your date with your a little bit of canna-cooking, Love and Marij partnership chair Maggie Murphy interviewed three world class cannabis chefs on for tips on making a magical romantic meal.
Pro Cooking Tips
HOW TO AVOID BEGINNERS MISTAKES
GET CREATIVE WITH THE MENU
When talking about cannabis edibles most people think only about brownies or gummy candies. But in this new age of recreational marijuana it’s time that the foodies started to get involved in the creation of innovative cannabis infusions. Instead of baking the usual pan of brownies try crafting savory appetizers or refreshing cannabis mocktails. Alcohol tinctures and even infused oils and can drizzled into beverages that can get date night started right. The Herbal Chef, Chef Chris Sayegh gives great advice on how to make canna-food that doesn’t taste like dank weed and great date night recipes on his website. Chef Sayegh also reminds home chefs to not add the cannabis infused item to the dish until the end of cooking so that the active cannabinoids don’t burn off.
Below Chef Chris Sayegh shares more on the art of cannabis cooking with Fox News:
CONSIDER KEIF
The key to creating potent cannabis infusions is to decarboxylate(decarb) the cannabis so that it releases the cannabinoids and terpenes into a fat like olive oil, coconut oil or cannabutter. Chef Ricky Flickenger warns against using shake or fresh bud to create concoctions and instead recommends a more effective approach.”My method, using kief, takes less than 10 minutes for a full decarb & infusion, keeps your food tasting like food, barely changes the color of the fat you are using, and does not make the house smell like cannabis. That fat (butter, olive oil, coconut oil, etc) can then be use din any dish, sauce, vinaigrette, as a spread, etc…for any recipe. Once infused into a fat, you do need to use low heat cooking methods (below 200F) to not vaporize the THC. So, no pan frying with it…but baking (the finished product never reaches above 200F) is great.” Be wise when using keif as it can have a more intense effect than dried flower.
Master the art of cooking with Chef Ricky’s website, Mortal and Pestle, where you can sign up for online cooking classes (coming soon).
KNOW YOUR DOSE
The most important part of planning a romantic night in with cannabis cuisine is to understand the proper dose. Ingesting too much can lead to quickly onset heavy sleep or an inability to make conversation which isn’t the best for a date. It can commonly take up to 2 hours to start feeling the effects of your cannabis meal so it’s imperative to know your proper dosage of THC before you consume. Avoid issues by making each infusing each meal with no more than 2-5mg THC of a researched strain of cannabis for anyone new to infused foods. This will ensure that the whole delicious dinner can be enjoyed without anyone becoming overly intoxicated.
A great tip from Chef Melissa Parks, co-author of Herb, for not overdoing the cannabis in a date night meal is to only infuse the sauce or another small portion of the dinner as opposed to every component of the plate. She suggests making a cannabutter and then pairing other herbs and flavors to create an elegant tasting flavored butter to top a nice cut of steak. Also know that each person is different so if this is a new partner then take the dosages really, really slow until each person is aware of their natural sweet spot of intoxication.
Below, Chef Melissa Parks takes us through how to make a simple cannabutter:
ROMANTIC RECIPES
HOW TO WOW YOUR DATE
For a fun and easy to cook infused romantic dinner, try this pizza as a main course:
For a more advanced cook, try this Fettuccini Alfredo:
For a nice and light dessert, try this infused Pomegranate Sorbet:
If you’re in the mood for something a little more rich, try a cannabis infused Cannoli:
CHEF MELISSA PARKS
“You want to enjoy the process of cooking, of getting to know the plant, getting to make the dish and then actually be able to remember what you ate. The medicinal value along with a recipe really can become something magical in the kitchen; that’s what you want to express, to experience, especially in the date atmosphere.”
Below is a recipe from cookbook, Herb:
CHEF RICKY FLICKENGER
For an impressive romantic evening, Chef Ricky recommends “Pasta in Lemon Cream Sauce, Cherry Chipotle Chicken, Pan Roasted Salmon with a Lemon & Caper Butter Sauce…the possibilities are really endless!” Below, Chef Ricky shares his methods while baking a cannabis maple syrup and souffle.
What would you cook for a romantic cannabis date night? Any tips from your experience that aren’t listed here? We’d love to hear about it!
If I was cooking for my rancher boyfriend I might infuse one batch of dairy free butter or ghee and then separate it into 3 parts to infuse with different herbs as Chef Melissa Parks recommended. Then I’d put some butter on the steak, some on mashed potatoes and a bit on some slightly sauteed asparagus. Short, sweet and divinely medicated. How about you?