‘Tis the season to get high. If you’re looking for some ideas for a three-course meal this festive season, check out our guide to Christmas cooking with cannabis! We’ll be featuring some of the season’s most popular dishes but with an added twist of how to make them appropriate for a canna Christmas.
The Appetizer: Pigs in a Blanket
This popular and adorably-named dish is a much-loved Christmas staple. It’s unclear how, exactly, it came to dominate so many Christmas feasts, but as finger food, it does make a great starter.
The key to making your pigs in a blanket stoner certified is cannabutter and cannaflour in making the pastry. We previously made a guide on how to make cannabutter and cannaflour; throughout your Christmas cooking with cannabis, make sure to keep this guide on hand as you will use it multiple times.
You can find a great recipe for pigs in a blanket here, but you can substitute one cup of flour with cannaflour for an extra dose of oomph.
The Main Course: Roast Turkey with a Side of Mac and Cheese
urkey enjoys a surge in popularity during the latter months of the year. There are interesting theories as to why that is. In the 16th century, turkey was brought to Britain for the first time from the Americas. Turkey gave farmers more options for livestock during the hard Fall and Winter months. They could now use turkey for meat while saving their cows and chickens for milk and egg production. Furthermore, some sources cite King Henry VIII as further popularizing traditions of eating turkey for Christmas.
So how does one bring cannabis to a traditional turkey recipe? The answer is to rub your bird in kief.
Check out our recipe for a delicious kief dry rub mix here.
Alternatively, you can also pair your turkey with cannabis gravy. Again, this recipe requires cannabutter, and we recommend preparing a good amount of it when first making it as it is used widely in various recipes.
Now, for the side, we recommend a hearty old spoonful of mac and cheese, except our version, uses cannabutter in the sauce and comes with a healthy sprinkling of infused maple bacon. If that sounds sinful and gratuitous, that’s because it’s supposed to be.
Here is the recipe for our pothead-preferred mac and cheese, as well as a how-to guide on making infused maple syrup.
Make sure you don’t leave out the greens. You can make an infused maple balsamic vinaigrette as a salad dressing or even a marinade for roast vegetables.
The Dessert: Eggnog Cheesecake
What’s Christmas without some eggnog? But instead of just drinking it, why not put it in a cheesecake to dial the gluttony up to 11?
Since its introduction to the American colonies in the 18th century, eggnog has become a popular Christmas staple thanks to its warm temperature and usage of ingredients that embodied the winter season, such as vanilla bean, cinnamon, nutmeg and more.
To bring this delicious flavour to a cheesecake, the filling will need to be eggnog inspired, which means adding rum and vanilla extract in addition to store-bought eggnog. Our version of an eggnog cheesecake uses cannabutter for the crust, but you can also up the potency of this dish by making your own cannabis eggnog using kief.
Here’s how to make an eggnog cheesecake, or if you want to go the extra mile, cannabis eggnog.
Tips for Christmas Cooking with Cannabis
As with any ingredient, the key to using cannabis in gastronomy is not overdoing it. We have included tips to make every dish cannabis-friendly, but that doesn’t mean you should go all out for all of them. If you want to experiment with every dish, consider lowering the dosage across the board. Furthermore, always remember to decarb, or decarboxylate, your weed before using it in your recipes. One easy way to do this is to make cannabutter, but in cases where you are just using ground-up flower or kief, you can refer to our decarbing guide here.
Ultimately, the goal is to experiment with recipes, sate your cravings and enjoy yourself.
Now, it’s time to get cooking!