Dear Cheri,

Can you eat decarboxylated weed?  In other words, you you just eat weed without making edibles first?

Can you eat decarboxylated weed?  Sure.  You definitely can.  But you may or may not want to.

Some people find cannabis a little difficult to digest in its plant form.  So if stomach upset and distress is an issue, you might not just want to chow down on a bud.

However, if you are not among this group, swallowing some decarbed bud can be a quick and easy way to get the effects of edibles, without actually have to make to make edibles.

Some people even like to grind up decarbed cannabis flowers and fill capsules with them.  They take the capsules just like vitamins.

Of course, you don’t need to make capsules, you can simply eat the decarbed flower.

The Importance of Decarboxylation When Eating Cannabis Flowers

I am glad you mentioned decarboxylation in your question as this is important.  With this simple process that converts the THC-A (or acid) in raw cannabis into psychoactive THC, eating cannabis flowers would not give you a buzz.  Although they would still offer medicinal benefits.

Decarboxylation adds heat, which causes the THC-A to convert to THC.  The process is not difficult.  My decarboxylation tutorial will give you details on how to do it.

The Importance of Fat When Eating Cannabis Flowers

The other factor I find important when eating cannabis flowers, is fat. 

Cannabinoids like THC and CBD metabolize with and bind to fats.  So if you are just going to eat weed without making it into an edible first, try to eat with something else that does contain fat, be it food or drink. 

You can opt not to, but I find the effects do not last as long.

Cooking with Marijuana Flowers

More often than not, cannabis cooks will make infusions like cannabutter or cannaoil and then use those in their edibles recipes.

However, there are a number of recipes that adapt well to cooking with cannabis flowers.  These recipes do not require the extra step of making a cannabis infusion.  You can simply decarboxylate your cannabis, crumble it up, and add it to the recipe.

Ground meat dishes work especially well for this technique.  So do long slow cooking cause with lots of herbs, such as Italian marinara or meat sauce.

Check out my collection of cannabis recipes using ground buds here.