Beyond Weed : How to Make Cannabis-Infused Hamburgers

As cannabis is becoming more prominent in every-day society, it is important to understand how to use it in a versatile way. That’s why today I’ve decided to write about an infusion process that is slightly more complicated than making brownies or anything of the sorts. Hemp-based meats are now on the market just like other plant-based protein burgers and nuggets.

Today we’re going to be talking about the basics of infusing your typical foods with cannabis and considering that most people love hamburgers, I decided to show you a recipe that will not only taste like heaven but will get you stoned in the process.

So let’s just jump right into it.

Ingredients:

5 Grams of Premium Cannabis

2 sticks of Butter with high fat count

Half a Kilo of ground beef

Onions

Mushrooms (optional)

Fresh Mint (optional)

Garlic

2 Eggs

Bread crumbs

Assorted Spices

The ingredients listed here is to make the meat patties. Obviously, you’d need bread, lettuce and the rest of the stuff you like to put on a hamburger.

Now that we have all the base ingredients, let’s look at the process.

Step 1 – Decarb Your Weed

The first thing you will need to do is to decarb your weed. For those who don’t know what that means, it essentially refers to the process of using heat to activate the psychoactive ingredient. To do this, simply grind up the cannabis you have and place it in an oven-ready tray.

Preheat the oven to 176º C (348º F) and then place the tray inside for a good 10 minutes. This should be more than enough to activate the THC, converting it from THCa (it’s the non-psychoactive acid form) to 9-delta-THC (the activated form).

Step 2 – Infuse the butter with the weed

The next step we will be taking your activated cannabis and mixing it with some butter (highest fat count you can find) on the stove. Take your two sticks of butter and melt it on a low flame. You don’t need to have a lot of heat since you already activated the cannabis.

Melt the butter and then mix the cannabis with the melted butter. In this process, you’ll want to keep on stirring the contents for about 15 to 20 mins. This should provide a good infusion.

Once completed, let the mix cool down a bit (but not too much) and then strain it through some cheesecloth. Make sure to squeeze out every drop as that is infused-butter.

Step 3 – Prepping the patties

Now that you have your weed mix, it’s time to make the patties. To do this, you’ll want to take your ground beef and throw it into a mixing bowl. Next, finely cut the garlic, onion, mint, and mushrooms. Make sure that it’s as small as you can cut it.

Now, simply toss all of that into the meat and add your two eggs. Mix all of the contents together and make sure that it’s evenly mixed.

Finally, you’ll add in the butter (melted) into the mix with your assorted spices. If the butter hardened, it’s okay to simply put it into the microwave for 20 -30 seconds to melt it once more.

Mix all of the ingredients well. Finally, add in the bread crumbs and once more create an even mix.

That is essentially all you need for the patty itself. Now, the patty is infused with cannabis butter. You also might not end up using all the butter. In this case, use the remaining butter instead of cooking oil. Place it in a pan and start to simmer.

Cooking the Meat

Considering that you have your patties infused with weed butter, it’s not recommended to cook on an open flame. In other words, it’s not the best idea to barbeque the burgers. Rather, use a pan or something that can collect the juices. This will ensure that most of the infusion remains within the patty and doesn’t burn off when cooked. Remember, these are not hemp-based meat pattie s, but regular hamburger meat you are infusing with cananbis.

In order to cook the meat, you’ll need to first make the meat patties. Simply take a big enough ball of ground beef and shape it into a patty. That’s it!

With the half a kilo, you should be able to get between 6-8 patties depending on how big you make them.

Once you have finished the process of cooking all the patties, odds are that there will be some juice/oil left in the pan. Use this oil/butter to cook other things like bacon, onions, mushrooms and whatever else you’d like to put on the burger. That way you’ll do a mild infusion on these other ingredients as well.

Eating the Burger

The recipe I gave above is a mild recipe. It’s not meant to send you into the netherworld. However, it’s a good place to start practicing more difficult infusions. Just remember to wait for an hour prior to scarfing down another burger, I know you’ll be tempted, but be patient.

Once the burger hits you, you’ll know whether you can eat more or whether you should wait some more. The beauty of this technique is that the burger won’t taste like weed, it will have a minty undertone and a hint of cannabis, despite being infused with a decent amount. That’s because when you decarb weed, you remove a lot of the plant material that gives it that “Herbie” taste we have come to love.