If you love to cook, you might be interested in adding CBD oil to the mix. Not only is this an easy way to get your daily CBD dosage, but it has other benefits too.
Can cooking with CBD increase its bioavailability?
While CBD doesn’t blend with water, it does work well with fats, such as those found in dairy and butter. These ingredients make it easier for CBD to be absorbed into the body.
In addition to that, CBD in your food can also help to increase its absorption, which is why it’s often recommended that you consume CBD after having eaten something. With that in mind, let’s look at how you can enjoy CBD in your delicious meals, along with some important tips to follow.
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Be Careful With Heat!
Cooking and heat often go hand in hand, but this could be problematic for CBD. It starts to lose its powerful effects when exposed to extreme heat and can end up tasting really bitter, so you have to be careful about heat when using CBD to cook.
You should always avoid cooking CBD at temperatures higher than 120 degrees Fahrenheit. When it comes to baking, don’t bake anything with CBD in it if it requires temperatures higher than 340 degrees Fahrenheit.
To further prevent the negative effects of cooking with too much heat, use CBD in other ways in the kitchen, such as by sprinkling it like a regular oil over pizza, eggs, or salads.
Use Dosage, Don’t Drizzle!
If you regularly use oils such as olive oil in your cooking, you might wonder if you can start using CBD oil instead. There are some good reasons why you should avoid this. The first one is because you don’t want to expose the oil to high heat, as mentioned earlier, and the second reason is that this can cause you to consume too much of it.
While ingesting high doses of CBD might not have an effect on you, it can have negative side effects for some people, leading to issues such as lightheadedness, tiredness, or diarrhea, so you want to be careful with using too much of it in your cooking.
Added to the above is the issue of nutrients that you still want to gain from healthy oils you love to cook with, an example being olive oil. Don’t miss out on its nutrients by replacing it with CBD oil.
Not only should you ensure you have a variety of nutrients in your cooking, but you also have to consider that CBD doesn’t always have a pleasant taste.
What CBD Oil Tastes Like
We’re talking about food here, so you don’t always want to make CBD the ingredient that you allow to take center stage, especially if it’s got a strong taste that can ruin the entire dish you’ve slaved away in the kitchen to make.
The thing to remember about CBD oil is that it’s generally an earthy oil that tastes a bit like grass and olive oil, as Mic reports. If you don’t like it, use less of it instead of trying to hide its flavor with the use of too much sweetness.
That can bring unwanted consequences, such as adding too much sugar to meals and making them high in calories as a result.
If you really don’t like the taste of CBD oil, you can choose to purchase CBD oil that’s combined with olive oil.
Some brands offer olive oil products that contain a bit of CBD in them, so that could be a clever way to incorporate CBD into your food without doing anything too different with the flavor profiles that you know and love.
Examples of such products include Plant People olive oil that contains 200mg of CBD and it’s full spectrum, meaning that it contains all the compounds from the plant.
This product is buttery and rich, while being smooth. Another product to try is Pot D’Huile that contains 125mg of full-spectrum CBD. It’s rich yet fresh and tastes a bit vegetal which will make it suitable for use in many different dishes.
6 Delicious CBD Recipes
Now that you have a better understanding of cooking with CBD and how to go about it, let’s look at some of the most delicious recipes that use CBD as an ingredient.
Recipe 1: Choc-Chip CBD Cookies
Everyone loves choc-chip cookies, but give them a bit of an extra punch by putting CBD in them. This is a delicious and easy way to get your CBD fix instead of swallowing bitter oils. Although this recipe has a lot of ingredients, it’s really easy to make and is sourced from Cannabinoid Creations.
Ingredients
- 0.5oz CBD oil
- 3 cups flour
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup softened butter
- 1 cup brown sugar
- ½ teaspoon of salt
- 2 eggs
- 2 teaspoons of hot water
- 1 cup chopped nuts
- 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
- 2 cups chocolate chips
Method
- Make sure you preheat your oven to 340 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Mix together the butter, CBD, brown sugar, and white sugar in a bowl. The fat in the butter will work wonderfully with the CBD so that it will be better absorbed by your body. You want the mixture to be smooth, so aim for that.
- One at a time, beat your eggs into the creamy mixture.
- Add in the vanilla extract and stir well.
- Take your baking soda and dissolve it in the hot water.
- Add the dissolved baking soda to the batter.
- Add the salt, then stir in the chocolate chips, flour, and nuts.
- Place spoonfuls of this delicious mixture into pans and bake them until the cookies look crispy and golden-brown in color.
Recipe 2: Pesto With CBD
Making pesto with CBD is the perfect way to add this ingredient to your cooking in a small but powerful way.
Once you’ve made the CBD pesto, you can add it to your favorite pasta dishes or sandwiches without worrying about heat degrading the oil. This recipe is taken from Bloom Hemp.
A note on this recipe: it makes use of CBD isolate. This is a powder that’s pure CBD and nothing else, so you really have to ensure that you add it to a buttery or dairy ingredient to draw out its full potency. In this recipe, you’ll do that with olive oil.
Ingredients
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 2 cups basil leaves
- ½ cup parmesan cheese
- ⅓ cup pine nuts (you can substitute these for other nuts if you like)
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon of pepper
- ¾ olive oil that’s already
been infused with CBD isolate
METHOD
- First, infuse the olive oil with your CBD oil. You can do this by putting water on a low boil on the stove and then adding the olive oil to it before putting in your CBD isolate.
- Make sure you stir the mixture until you can’t see the CBD isolate.
- Once you have made the CBD olive oil, you can start to make the pesto by putting the cheese, basil leaves, garlic, and pine nuts in a blender.
- Pulse the ingredients until they are finely minced.
- Stir in the CBD olive oil.
- With your blender on a low setting, mix the ingredients together.
- Add some seasonings, such as salt, and then blend the mixture on a high setting.
Tip: If you don’t have CBD isolate, you can use CBD oil instead. To make sure that it will be mixed in with the ingredients, you could purchase a CBD oil that contains coconut MCT oil so that it will have the fattiness that CBD needs when cooked with other ingredients.
Recipe 3: CBD Guacamole
Who doesn’t love guacamole?
You can make it even more fun to eat by adding CBD oil to it. Here’s an easy recipe to try that will be enough for four servings.
Ingredients
- 3 ripe avocados that have been peeled, pitted, and mashed in a bowl
- 1 lime (juiced)
- 1 teaspoon garlic (minced)
- 2 tomatoes
- 3 tablespoons cilantro (chopped)
- ½ cup onion (diced)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon of CBD oil
- 1 pinch of cayenne pepper
METHOD
- Mix together the avos, lime juice, salt, and CBD oil
- Add the cilantro, tomatoes, garlic, and onion.
- Stir in the cayenne pepper.
- Put the guacamole in the fridge to keep it cool before serving.
Recipe 4: CBD Garlic Butter Steak
This is a delicious recipe that you can whip up at home when you need a protein fix. The bonus of using the butter is that it’s an easy way for your CBD to reach its full effect, while also making the dish delicious and creamy.
Ingredients
- 250g rump steak
- 1 garlic clove
- 55g butter
- Salt and black pepper to taste
Ingredients for the garlic butter:
- 400mg butter
- 15 cloves garlic
- 1 teaspoon parsley
- 7 tablespoons of olive oil
How to make the garlic butter
- Soften your butter (you can do that in the microwave) and then mix it in a bowl with the chopped garlic.
- Add a tablespoon of olive oil and also your CBD oil. While the recipe doesn’t give a quantity of the CBD oil, start with a teaspoon if you’re using it for the first time. If you regularly cook with CBD oil, use a quantity that you’re comfortable with.
- When the mixture is creamy and smooth, add in the parsley.
Method
- Make a rub for your steak with olive oil, salt, and pepper.
- Heat a pan with two tablespoons of olive oil in it.
- Add the steak to it and cook it for two minutes if you like your meat rare or for about six minutes if you want a medium-rare steak.
- Turn the steak every now and then, and add seasoning to it as you go along.
- Rub a cut garlic clove all over the steak when you turn it in the pan. You can also add some butter to it to add more flavor.
- Once you have cooked the steak according to your preferences, you can serve it with the garlic butter that has been infused with CBD oil.
Recipe 5: CBD Summer Salad
If you’ve already had dinner but want something quick and easy that contains CBD, this is a fresh, invigorating salad that you’ll love.
It makes use of delicious ingredients such as watermelon and apricots, so it’s rich in nutrients. A nice bonus is that it makes use of cold and warm ingredients, for a nice spin on a traditional salad. Here’s how to make it, courtesy of Royal CBD.
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons feta cheese
- 3 small apricots (sliced)
- ¼ red onion (chopped)
- 4 cups arugula
- ½ medium-sized watermelon (cubed)
- 1 handful of mint leaves (chopped)
Ingredients for CBD honey dressing
- ¼ cup honey
- ¼ cup virgin olive oil
- ½ cup balsamic vinegar
- 0.25g CBD isolate powder
- Black pepper and salt to taste
Method
- Over medium heat, you want to preheat a grill pain.
- Put some olive oil on the sliced apricots and then place them on the pan.
- You want to cook them so that they caramelize. When that’s done, take them off the heat.
- In a bowl, mix together the mint, onion, and watermelon.
- Whisk the olive oil, honey, CBD powder, and balsamic vinegar. Mix it well and add pepper and salt to taste. This will be your salad dressing.
- In a salad bowl, add the mint, arugula, and onion.
- Drizzle the dressing over it.
- Put the salad on plates and add the grilled apricots, feta cheese, and watermelon cubes.
Recipe 6: CBD Banana And Strawberry Smoothie
This is another easy and fun recipe to try.
It’s so easy that it might be the best CBD recipe to start out with. The best part about it is that you can add or tweak the ingredients if you want to add different flavors. Here’s how to make it.
Ingredients
- 1 frozen banana
- ½ cup of frozen strawberries
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1 cup of milk – this can be any kind of milk, even nut milk if you want to avoid dairy
- A few ice cubes
- 1ml CBD oil
Method:
It couldn’t be easier to make this smoothie. All you have to do is combine all of the ingredients into a blender and then blend it until you like the consistency.
How Does CBD Oil Make You Feel?
You might’ve heard of the benefits of taking CBD, such as experiencing less anxiety or having relief from physical pain, but how does it actually make you feel?
This is especially important to know if you’re going to be adding CBD oils or isolate to your cooking.
Emily Heitman, co-founder of Leef Organics, told Well And Good that CBD will affect different people in different ways but adds that everyone will feel more balance and relief when they use CBD on a daily basis.
In addition, if you experience anxiety or pain, CBD can help you to take those experiences away, leaving wellbeing in its wake.
As Drew Todd, co-founder of CBD brand Feals, said in the same article, taking CBD isn’t about getting high (because it really won’t make you high) but rather it’s about removing whatever obstacles are in the way, such as pain or anxiety.
That means, less stress and pain and more pleasure from the delicious foods you’re cooking and eating!
Related Questions
Does the type of CBD oil matter when cooking with it?
Yes!
You want to purchase filtered and refined CBD oils as these won’t result in unpleasant aftertastes that can happen with CBD.
How can you ensure that the CBD will be in every serving of the meal?
Always make sure that you’ve mixed the CBD in well with your other ingredients. You need to stir them as much as possible so that the CBD will be distributed evenly throughout the food.
Conclusion
Cooking with CBD is a fun and interesting thing to try the next time you whip up delicious food in the kitchen. However, make sure you follow some important tips so you don’t end up with a bitter-tasting meal.
In this article, we’ve looked at some of the most important rules to follow when cooking with CBD, and we’ve also provided you with some tasty and easy recipes to help you get started. Bon appetit!
