It seems like a lot of people have love for good food on here, especially yours truly future4200,
which is why I wanted to post something on here.
I lived my whole life in Belgium, went to culinary school and worked as a chef in high-end restaurants, got burnt out, then decided to move to the US to pursue my 2nd passion: cannabis.
Due to Covid, I haven’t been able to get a job in the lab lately but I’ve been reconnecting with my love for making quality food after all these years.
Now, I have some ideas/theories and want to merge my 2 passions together and create something new involving flavors (No, I’m not talking about edible gummies)
I want to create a high-end product that makes people open their eyes and blurb a really long
“FUuuuuuuuuuuuck, that’s delicious”
R&D for this would require basic processing equipment:
-1L SPD setup
-Buchner funnel filtration
-Small roto-vap
-Vac oven
So if you live in Portland, OR and would be interested in going down this rabbit hole with me, I would love to chat and make some delicious things happen!
Please also feel free to hit me up if you have any questions regarding French cooking/techniques or are looking for a chef to hire in Portland wink-wink.
Shamelessly posting pictures of food I used to make back in Belgium :
People have been exploring this idea for a good while, and it seems that the easiest route is through a catering service.
If the client provides the cannabinoids, then the regulatory bodies here in the state have no real jurisdiction over what is done. Cooking would have to be done at the clients’ location, which can be challenging but not impossible.
I’m only 2 hours south of you and would be happy to chat about what some colleagues of mine have been able to accomplish (and how they went about doing it). It’s likely much easier (and less expensive) for one to avoid producing their own extracts and just focus on the food.
For a legal route catering makes a lot of sense. There’s a lot of trap edible brands popping up out here, they’re making solventless cheesecakes, miniature pies, infused ice cream etc. They seem to be pretty popular
If the flavor of cannabis is all you seek, then terpenes are what you want to focus on, as they are the primary carriers of flavor. Maybe even looking into incorporating molecular gastronomy wouldn’t be a bad plan (assuming that is not already part of your tool belt), especially if focusing on the flavor of cannbis without cannabinoids.
Making cannabis flavored food without cannabinoids will be a game with terpenes, as far as I can tell. Problem is that you will miss out on so many other flavors carried in cannabis extracts (and flower, hash, kief, etc) that are not able to be recreated with terpenes alone. For full cannabis flavor, cannabinoids are part of the package, at least for now. As noted above, people who want cannabis flavoring in food also tend to be disappointed when the cannabinoids are missing. Haha
Seems counterintuitive to not incorporate the cannabinoids as well, but I applaud your efforts and direction in bridging the world’s of cannabis and fine dining. Your food truly does look amazing. It’s the kind of food you don’t want to eat because it’s too pretty, but you know you have to eat because it will taste as good as it looks.
You may also find that the novelty of cooking with cannabis processing equipment will be outweighed by their inability to outperform equipment designed for food processing. The right tool for the job should be the preferred tool for the task at hand. If that happens to be lab equipment, awesome, but don’t be too upset if it doesn’t work quite the way you hope. Your food deserves to be the star.
I would also add that the higher quality extracts are used, the higher quality food can be produced. Unless you want to become an expert extractor as well as chef, I would suggest befriending some of the great extractors here in the state and start experimenting with off the shelf extracts and flower from dispensaries.
No y’all misunderstand: this guy (@FluffyVomit fluffyvomit)wants to make a seufle (sp?) from a wiped film (short path actually) and puffed cheesecakes from rotovaps and vac ovens. You can’t hear that over his loud plating.
Hhaha thanks for being so kind and diving into the subject and giving your ideas.
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. I’m not trying to do anything with cannabinoids just yet.
I just want to use the equipment to play around with flavors. If it’s successful. Then I’ll look into that.
Edit: The equipment is not to actually cook! It’s to play around with flavors!
How do you intend to use the equipment to play with flavors? I guess I’m not entirely clear what you are trying to achieve with the equipment you mentioned. I’m rather curious and genuinely befuddled.
Some elaboration on specifically what you intend to do with the equipment may help elicit responses from other members, as well. We want to help but don’t know how. Haha
