How to Decarboxylate Cannabis in Your Instapot

Curious about cooking your own cannabis edibles? Interested in making your own cannabis oils and tinctures? Decarboxylating cannabis buds in the oven can seem daunting if you’ve never decarbed your own flower before, but trust us when we tell you, yes, you can decarboxylate cannabis in your instapot!

You’ve probably wondered if you could skip decarboxylation and just cook with the raw cannabis buds. Well, you could, but you wouldn’t be getting the same effects as if you heated the dried plant matter.

The reason pre-cooking your cannabis flower is necessary is that it converts the THC from its acid form (THCa) to its active form. Without the decarboxylation step, you can still eat it and get some nutrients from the THCa and other cannabinoids and terpenes, but it won’t have that extra oomph that you expect the THC to provide.

Decarbing cannabis flower has become a bit of an art form. If you scour the internet, you are bound to find about 100 different how-tos on temperature and technique. It can be mind boggling! But what they all have in common is that once you turn up the heat, the pungent smell of cannabis wafts from your kitchen, fill the whole house, and even linger on your clothing. That smell can make it hard to be discreet with your cannabis preparations, which can result in uncomfortable conversation with for those of us with children or nosy neighbors.

Enter your humble technological appliance: the pressure cooker.

Yes, you can activate the THC in your flower using your Instant Pot! The entire process takes approximately the same amount of time as putting your cannabis on a cookie sheet and cooking it at 225 degrees for 40 minutes. The bonus? Because the cannabis cooks and cools in a sealed environment, it is virtually odor-free. 

Instant Pots are a big win for those of us who want to make our own cannabis edibles, tinctures, and tonics but would rather our houses not smell like a college dorm.  

To prepare for decarboxylating your dried cannabis, make sure you have a good quality mason jar with a lid that fits inside your closed Instant Pot. You’ll also want to use the steamer rack insert made specifically for your Instant Pot model. If a rack didn’t come with your machine, you should purchase the appropriate steamer rack because you don’t want to put the jar directly down into the Instant Pot bowl.

If you factor in the time it takes to grind your cannabis flower, you’re looking at about 20 minutes of prep time. After that, put the ground buds into the jar, fill the Instant Pot with water, press a few buttons, and voila! Your home will not smell like you are cooking cannabis at all.

Here is a list of things you will need to decarboxylate cannabis your Instant Pot:

• Instant Pot
• Instant Pot bowl
• Water
• Wire rack for Instant Pot
• Cannabis flower (½ ounce or more)
• Cannabis grinder
• A quality mason jar with a lid
• Pot holder, canning tongs, or oven gloves (The jar is hot when you remove it)

Instructions:

1. Break apart your cannabis flower with a grinder until each piece is no larger than a grain of rice.
2. Put it in the mason jar and loosely secure the lid.
3. Put the wire rack into the Instant Pot bowl.
4. Place the upright jar inside the Instant Pot then fill the Instant Pot bowl with water until the jar is submerged halfway, but doesn’t float.
5. Close the Instant Pot lid and program it to pressure cook on high for 40 minutes.
6. When the cycle completes, manually release the steam per the instructions of your particular Instant Pot model.
7. Remove the jar using canning tongs or an oven mitt and let it cool for at least 30 minutes. Conversely, you can leave the jar in the Instant Pot to cool as long as you unplug it so that it doesn’t continue to “warm” your newly decarboxylated jar of cannabis flower.

And there you have it –  a virtually odor-free method for decarboxylating cannabis using that wonder of kitchen technology known as the Instant Pot!

Check out our recipe for cannabutter the old fashioned way!

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