When most people think about cannabis they can eat, their minds dart to brownies, gummy worms and Rice Krispies treats.
But Jazmine Moore offers another way in for the edible cannabis-curious: salad dressing.
Moore, professionally known as “Chef Jazz,” is the founder of Green Panther Chef, a Washington, D.C.-based cannabis catering company that books private events and hands-on cooking classes along the East Coast, including in Baltimore.
When it comes to cooking with cannabis, “I really like to broaden people’s perspectives,” Moore said. That’s where the salad dressing comes in. Aside from the cannabis-infused oil, dressing with cannabis is pretty much the same as dressing without. Home chefs can drizzle it atop a bed of greens or mix it into a potato salad.
“It’s familiar,” Moore said, “and most people can get behind it.”
With the launch of Maryland’s recreational cannabis market on July 1, Moore’s catering schedule stands to get even busier. Cannabis you can smoke was a focus as the state’s dispensaries geared up for the weekend, but those within the industry expect that edibles will eat up a significant chunk of the market, too. Cannabis-infused cooking, meanwhile, is on the rise as people look for new ways to incorporate recreational cannabis into their lives.
Adult-use edible sales in the United States totaled $3.6 billion in 2021, according to data from Statista, and are expected to grow to $8.24 billion by 2025. Edibles appear to be gaining in popularity as more states shift from a medical-only market to a recreational one, Flowhub, a cannabis technology company, suggests in its 2023 industry report.
High on chocolates, gummies
Cannabis companies are taking note. Kind Therapeutics, a subsidiary of the multi-state cannabis operator MariMed Inc., announced plans last summer to add an expanded production kitchen to its Hagerstown facility so it can produce cannabis-infused products like Betty’s Eddies fruit chews, Bubby’s Baked cookie and brownie bits and Vibations powdered drink mixes.
In Cecil County, SunMed Growers is spending $16 million on a new, 25,000-square-foot edibles factory. The facility will produce 50,000 to 60,000 cannabis-infused gummies and chocolates, as well as 10,000 baked goods, per day, according to SunMed President Jake Van Wingerden. He’s hoping to have the first batches of SunMed edibles on dispensary shelves by mid-to-late-July.
Though buds and vape pens make up a hefty share of the market, Van Wingerden thinks edibles have the potential to account for 30% of cannabis sales in Maryland.
“I personally do not smoke and most people I know don’t smoke, especially younger generations. It’s not part of our culture,” he said. “Someone who doesn’t smoke is probably not going to buy a joint to try cannabis, or even a vape. But everybody eats every single day.”
SunMed’s edibles use distillate, a flavorless concentrate refined from the cannabis flower, to precisely measure the dosage that goes into each gummy, chocolate or brownie bar. Maryland’s new law includes precise parameters for edibles, capping those sold for recreational use at 10 milligrams of cannabis per snack. Packaging must be tamper-proof and child-resistant.
You won’t see any gummy bears or worms either: under the law, shapes that might appeal to kids are prohibited. SunMed’s edibles will be molded into circles and squares, instead, with the letters “THC” imprinted on top.
‘You can add cannabis’
While the law lays out regulations for edibles, cooking meals with cannabis will be limited to the province of home chefs and private events, at least for now.
Will and Gwenelle Parks started offering cannabis cooking classes as a complement to their gourmet condiment company, Saucier Willy, in 2018. The husband-and-wife duo are both certified patients under Maryland’s medical cannabis program as well as trained chefs, and they wanted to educate others about the ins and outs of cooking with cannabis.
“Some people think they can go and buy it from a dispensary and just throw it in their recipe,” Will Parks said.
But that’s not the case. The psychoactive compounds in a cannabis flower purchased at the dispensary must be activated before using in a recipe. The process is called decarboxylation, and there are expensive devices on the market that home chefs can buy to prepare their cannabis for cooking.
Parks has a simpler method to suggest: he instructs students to activate cannabis by grinding it up, putting it in a Mason jar and heating it in the oven at 245 degrees for 45 minutes. The plant will turn from green to brown, and the jar will keep the aroma of cannabis from overwhelming the kitchen.
Saucier Willy’s cooking classes go over other important topics, too, like dosing. Will Parks prefers microdoses of cannabis, such as a tablespoon of cannabis butter on his morning oatmeal. Others might need a higher dose, particularly when it’s being used for medical purposes. That’s the case for Gwenelle Parks, who suffers from gastroparesis and uses cannabis to relieve pain and other symptoms.
The key is figuring out how the experience of ingesting cannabis will affect you, Will Parks said.
“Everyone knows that if they’ve had an edible and if they’ve smoked something, it’s a completely different feeling you’re going to get,” he said. Edibles are “processed in your liver and affect you longer — you get a more intense high or more intense feelings overall.”
The Saucier Willy condiments business shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now the couple is focused on growing their cannabis cooking classes. With the advent of the recreational market, they also expect to book more private and catered events.
Will Parks encourages thinking outside the box when it comes to cooking with cannabis: he’s got recipes for everything from meatballs to crab dip to cannabis-infused mocktails.
“I tell people if it’s something you can eat or drink, you can add cannabis,” he said.
No cannabis in restaurants — for now
Don’t expect to find cannabis-infused meals on menus at Maryland restaurants anytime soon, however. The law requires cannabis to largely be consumed in private, though it does create an on-site consumption license that can be issued by counties or municipalities to cannabis smoking lounges and some bakeries starting in May 2024. (The state also allows local government to decide against issuing the licenses, as in Ocean City, where council members recently voted to advance a proposal barring on-site consumption establishments.)
Lounges and other places for social use of cannabis play a “key factor in maximizing the positive socioeconomic impact of legalization,” said Morgan Fox, the political director at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML. Fox pointed out that residents of federally funded public housing communities could be evicted for smoking or eating cannabis, which is still illegal at the federal level.
Cannabis lounges are one way to create a “third place” for cannabis consumption. But under the current law, on-site consumption establishments are not allowed to add cannabis to food prepared or served on their premises. Allowing restaurants to serve cannabis, which is not considered under Maryland’s law, would require an even more complicated regulatory framework. Ensuring accurate dosing — and monitoring diners to make sure they don’t become too high — is a tough task when the kitchen is slammed on a Friday night.
“Even the best chefs can’t necessarily guarantee 100% product consistency on a given day,” Fox said. “The simple fact is that the regulatory structure does not necessarily allow for that level of granularity and it would be inconceivably difficult to enforce that.”
That doesn’t mean people aren’t willing to try if the prospect of cannabis restaurants ever becomes legal in Maryland.
Bryan Burkert, who owns Fells Point record store The Sound Garden and has an interest in the attached coffee shop, Luna Garden, said he “certainly would be interested” in serving food with cannabis if it became a possibility. Burkert was previously a partner in a medical cannabis lounge planned at 701 S. Bond St., but other partners in the project later decided to convert it to a special events space, he said.
For now, cooking with cannabis will be limited to private kitchens and events in Maryland.
Moore, the D.C.-based cannabis chef, said she’s seeing a growing interest in private events and cooking demos as recreational cannabis is legalized in more areas. She has a cooking demonstration scheduled in Baltimore next month as part of the Lucky Leaf Expo at the Baltimore Convention Center.
“We’re becoming more open, more receptive,” Moore said. “It’s not so taboo anymore.”
