Incredible Medibles: The Official High Times Cannabis Cookbook, Part 2

Fantastical Fudge is easy and sweet.

The one thing that The Official High Times Cannabis Cookbook doesn't tell you is that making medibles is a smelly process.

Measurements in the brand-new cookbook are accurate if disjointed -- going from ounces to grams to cups in one recipe, for example -- and the recipes are reliably good. Many of them are from celebrity chefs and actual, legitimate celebrities in other areas. (If you guessed that Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg are two of these celebs, you'd be correct.) And the infusion methods listed at the front of the cookbook are staggeringly simple.

But that smell.

There are three ways to combat it, one easier than the others. The first (and easiest) is to boil a pot of water while you're cooking up your medibles and add a few drops of essential oils or even vanilla extract. My friend, a licensed medical marijuana purveyor in California and a chef, suggests frying bacon as his favorite method.

The second is to use "good" weed, and not cheap schwag that will stink up your house. This honestly shouldn't be a concern as you should be purchasing medical-grade stuff for your medibles, but patients and compassionate care-minded people in other states where cannabis is illegal often take what they can get. The third is simply to sous-vide the stuff.

For the purposes of this review, however, we made the simple cannabutter recipe listed on page 25.

The butter must be strained well prior to using.

For medical patients, the High Times cookbook recommends using two ounces of cannabis for each pound of butter. This means you're looking at around $415 total (including a pound of Plugra; always use good butter, in every cooking application), so the recipe had better be excellent in order to avoid wasting a lot of money.

One odd thing to note about the cannabutter recipe is that it calls for salted butter. While I was initially skeptical of this, I instructed my chef friend to follow the instructions regardless.

We were rewarded with a nutty, fragrant cannabutter that can easily be adapted for many different uses. The flavor and aroma (and even the final product, as seen above) were similar to a pesto heavy on toasted pine nuts. The infused butter, once strained, can be refrigerated three or four days.

Another thing the cookbook doesn't tell you, however, is that the cannabutter -- unlike regular butter -- does not have an extended shelf life in the fridge. Plant matter particulates left behind in the strained butter will cause it to mold within a week, so if you don't plan on using it right away, freeze it. The butter freezes well and can be sliced off at will.