MONTAGUE, P.E.I. - It’s a new twist on a familiar question often heard at the Christmas dinner table: “Honey, can you please pass the cannabis-infused gravy?”
And for Neil Menzie – owner, chef and instructor with T.H. Sea Creations, a catering business in Montague – the question he’s hearing more as Christmas approaches is “how do I make cannabis-infused gravy?”
“I’ve had a few calls on it, for sure,” Menzie said. “We go into people’s homes and teach them how to cook with cannabis from the comfort of their own homes. We (also) do an infused Christmas or infused holiday dinner (such as Thanksgiving).”
Menzie has been a chef on P.E.I. at different places for about 10 years. He launched his business on Oct. 17 – the day recreational cannabis became legal in Canada.
In the new year, he’s also planning to offer cooking classes for clients of Canada House Clinics (formerly Marijuana for Trauma).
He also holds information sessions as well as three-hour courses on how to make cannabis-infused butters and oils, rather than complete meals.
Menzie said, legally, he can’t infuse food and bring it to someone’s home for their consumption, nor can he bring cannabis to a home and cook with it. The cannabis for cooking must be supplied by the client.
“One of the rules of thumb that I always go by is ‘start low and go slow.’ You can always eat more but you can’t eat less.”
-Neil Menzie
People can buy cannabis oil for cooking, but he prefers to make his own infused oils and butters from dried cannabis.
In general, he’ll use five to 10 milligrams of cannabis oil as the range for a total meal. For example, one part of the overall meal – say carrots or mashed potatoes – may be infused with two milligrams. With stuffing or the turkey meat, he prefers to infuse the butter and gravy.
But for a first-time client, he recommends 2.5 to five milligrams.
“One of the rules of thumb that I always go by is ‘start low and go slow.’ You can always eat more but you can’t eat less.”
The cannabis also takes longer to take effect since it’s ingested rather than smoked. Ingesting cannabis gives the user a “body stone.”
Menzie prefers to infuse the gravy that is poured on the turkey meat with cannabis or rub the turkey breast with cannabis-infused butter rather than infusing the meat directly.
In fact, he said he hasn’t tried injecting a turkey breast directly with cannabis and then cooking it in the oven, so he isn’t sure if that method would work. A potential issue is that THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) starts to degrade when it is cooked at 350 F.
“So, if you’re going over that, then it’s always best to add it in after,” he said.
And, once cannabis-infused beverages are on the Canadian market, he is interested in trying to cook a turkey in a similar way as cooking a “beer can chicken.”
