Spuds & Buds: Getting Baked with Infused Potatoes

Margaret 00:00:03 Hello and welcome to episode 292. And today we are using ghee to do potatoes three different ways. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and Certified Ganjier Margaret and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome everyone, to another fantastic episode of Bite Me, the show about edibles or Bite Me podcasts, as many people like to call it, this is the podcast that explores the intersection of food, culture and cannabis, helping cooks make great edibles at home. A little radical self-reliance, if you will. And what are we making today? And why is this exciting? Because who doesn't love potatoes? And in this world of rising prices and economic uncertainty, well, we might need to make potatoes more of a staple of our diet, if you hadn't already. I do love a good potato cooked in a myriad of different ways. Roast probably be my favorite, but for this one I got a little creative.

Margaret 00:01:08 And of course we're using ghee to make it because I just did an ingredient deep dive. A big bite on ghee last week if you haven't yet listened to that episode, so I encourage you to check that one out to find out why ghee is so wonderful and such a great way to get your THC. I won't rehash that. Go check that out if you're interested. So if you're listening to this for the first time, thank you for being here. I am so glad that you found me. However it is that you found me. Let me know if with one of the fan mail, you can send me a text message or email me. And if you've been here for a little while, I appreciate you listening. Thank you so much. It really means a lot because otherwise I'd be sitting here talking to myself, and a lot of times that's exactly what it feels like, that I'm sitting here talking to myself. However, if you enjoy the show, please consider leaving a review. A five star review does help spread the word and of course, share the show with somebody in your life that is also a cannabis and or edibles lover, although I guess they would probably be an edibles lover.

Margaret 00:02:08 However, there are several interviews that would be wonderful for those who are not really necessarily into edibles themselves, but interested in cannabis as a topic. And you can always go to the website. There is, under the Cannabis Resources section, a list of all the podcast guests that have ever appeared on the show, and I am proud to say I've had about 60 guests on this show at this point. It's one of my favorite parts about this show, to be honest. I love doing the solo episodes, but doing the interviews is really a highlight for me because I get to learn brand new things and share them with you folks. We are learning together. Before we get into today's meat and potatoes. Hahaha, that's a cheesy joke if I ever heard one, but I couldn't resist. I just wanted to share a couple of questions that I got, a couple of emails and fan mails. The first one comes from Jamie. And she says, Hi Margaret, I just found your Bite Me podcast. I'm located in South Carolina.

Margaret 00:03:11 Question for you about edibles. Can you use discarded flour in cooking without having it combined with a fat already? For example, could I take my discard flour and sprinkle it onto some veggies? I'm cooking versus cooking them with my can of butter. And that's a really great question. If we know that cannabis is activated through the de carb because we've applied some heat to our dried cannabis, which will activate it. Same thing happens when you fire up that joint. It's the heat that you're applying to the the joint that is going to activate the cannabis, which will allow you to get high. So we've already done the de carb process. Do we really need to add it to a fat. And the short answer is no you don't. It is actually ready to use and will get you high. Now, of course, there's lots of reasons why you might want to infuse it into a fat. and that's because you can easily add it to a broader range of recipes. But that doesn't mean you can't take some of that deep carved cannabis.

Margaret 00:04:09 Sprinkle it on your veggies, sprinkled on your salad, put it in some salad dressing. I've used it right in the dough for some cookies, like I mixed it in with the the the de carb cannabis and with the flour and not using it as a, as an infusion like you traditionally would. So yeah, there's lots of reasons why you might not want to. Maybe you just don't have time or energy and I can fully appreciate that. So yes, if you have d carb weed, especially if you use a dry herb vaporizer like I love to use a pax, I have a Pax three. They've since come out with some new models, but they have a ten year warranty, so I probably won't be replacing the one that I'm enjoying anytime soon. However, the spent cannabis that comes out of that little device I save up and I can use in edibles as well. And because that's already disarmed, you can make use of that immediately without having to infuse it, so why not? I mean, it's not going to hurt.

Margaret 00:05:06 The only thing you might find is that bit of a, you know, toasted taste of cannabis. So if you're mixing it with something that can mask the taste or you don't mind, then I say, why not? The next question comes from a listener in Hungary, and they're asking, do you have a cookbook? And the short answer to that is also yes, yes I do. If you head over to my website, there's a pop up that will often show up that will say, you can join my mailing list for the cookbook. It's also in the Bite Me Cannabis Club, so you can access it there as well if you're a member of the club. Just a couple of questions I got in recently. Thank you for your questions, folks. I love it when people send me questions. And if you want to, don't be shy. I'd love to hear from listeners because it's a nice reminder that yes, there are people on the other end listening. Now, for this particular episode, we are going into doing potatoes three ways using ghee.

Margaret 00:06:01 Now, I admit when I first thought about doing this recipe or this this episode, if you will, it was a large part because last week I did the ingredient big bite or deep dive or whatever you want to catch, anything you want to call it. And I did it on the subject of ghee, and I had done an episode a long time ago around infusing ghee because I have at this point having fused all the fats. Ghee is a wonderful one to do. Duck fat, olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, MCT oil, milk and cream. Actually, I think it was always cream, not milk. Because if I'm going to do the milk, I'm going to do the good shit, the really rich stuff that I'm probably not supposed to be drinking. Butter. What else is there? What have I missed? I've probably infused it, but ghee is a really interesting fat, so that's why I want to highlight it with this sort of ingredient. Deep dive. But then once you have the ghee, you're kind of like, well, what do you do with it? There's a million things you can do with it, because you can pretty much use ghee in a lot of your cooking as you would butter.

Margaret 00:06:59 I could have made cookies and just swapped out butter for ghee instead. But I've done cookies so many times on this show and I wasn't really feeling cookies lately. I have some other edibles that I'm enjoying right now because I always have some edibles kicking around, unsurprisingly, and I just didn't want to go for the sweets again because I know there's a lot of folks out there that may not share the sweet tooth that I have. So I'm trying to branch out friends, and I'm trying to do something that will excite the taste buds of those who don't necessarily have a sweet tooth. And who doesn't love potatoes? Who doesn't love potatoes? Well, if you don't, I'm sorry. This is not the episode for you. Now, I have to admit it is potatoes done three ways. But in full disclosure a lot. When I did that episode on infusing Ghee a while ago, I also did an episode on Hassle Back Potatoes and I used ghee for that particular recipe. So I'm going to kind of include that as one of the options.

Margaret 00:07:52 So basically the three types of potatoes we're looking at today are roast potatoes, mashed potatoes and Hasselbeck potatoes. The Hasselbeck potatoes are really fun to make. And they're they're visually interesting to look at. Mashed potatoes I hardly ever make, and I had made mashed potatoes for this particular episode for the first time in years. I think the last time I made it made mashed potatoes was maybe ten years ago, because there was a period in time when I was doing Christmas dinners for two sides of the family, because we would have both sides of the family over on for one Christmas dinner, instead of having to host two. And some of those dinners, those years got really large. Like, I like to remember them as like 30, 35 people, which for me for cooking was a lot. I'm not really accustomed to cooking for that many people. I don't know how many people are, but because it was two sides of the family and both sides of the family tended to have very distinct preferences. I found myself making doubles of a lot of things.

Margaret 00:08:53 I made two types of cranberry because some of the folks liked it right out of the can, and some preferred it not. I made two types of gravy. I made two types of stuffing and would make two types of potatoes. Thank God I'm not doing that shit anymore. That's all I can say. However, a good mashed potato, even though it's probably been it feels like a decade since I've made them. I realized how easy they are and I may be missing out, so I'm kind of glad that I've rediscovered the the classic mashed potato. And of course, there is the roast potato, which is my go to and something I cook often, especially in the winter time. I suppose you could do these fried potatoes as well if you wanted to. Maybe this is four ways potatoes with ghee. So there's a lot of different ways you can use ghee for potatoes. And I have to say that the ghee added a real richness and a real richness to the potatoes that I really appreciated. And it was lovely.

Margaret 00:09:49 And as far as roasting with as in the Hasselbeck and the roast potatoes, it really helped to crisp them up a lot as well and add that rich flavor to them. And you add salt and voila! You have something really special. I just took some potatoes. They ended up being relatively small potatoes. I bought a £5 bag of potatoes recently and I should have looked at it more. It looked like there was some bigger potatoes in it, but alas, they are more like the fingerling types. Small. Often that's not my favorite kind because I find washing and peeling those can be quite tedious, although it wasn't too bad. So I'm maybe because I wasn't doing them all at once. But I made the roast potatoes, I cut them, I quartered the potatoes and then put them in a bowl, and then I put some ghee all over them. I warmed it up a bit so it melted and then I roasted them in the oven. Now I did it at 350, just so that it wouldn't degrade any of the cannabis that was in my my infusion, and I roasted them until they were tender and pierce them with the fork and had some nice browning on them.

Margaret 00:10:55 I really love it when they have the the browning on them. If you if they don't have that, you got to leave them in for a little bit longer. It can take a little bit longer. But the nice thing about roast potatoes is you can sort of prep them, throw them in the oven, and then you can, you know, walk away. And then if you're preparing something else, you can do that while those are in the oven cooking away. And then for the mashed potatoes the these were peeled. Quarter. Well I guess quarter or halved. And then I boiled them for 20 minutes until they were fork tender. And then I mashed them, added a little bit of milk. I added some unenthused ghee for this particular one because I was infusing the mashed potatoes just for myself, so I added the infused ghee to my serving afterwards. So I still got everyone, still got the richness of the potatoes with the ghee. Mine was the only one that had the dosing in it as far as the potatoes went.

Margaret 00:11:44 So that's pretty important to remember who you're dosing, because there may be people that you're dining with that don't appreciate the edibles as much as you do, which is a shame, of course, but to each their own. We have to accept that we all have different preferences. So that's another reason why I liked the mashed potatoes, because it is a pretty easy recipe to sort of infuse on your own, and you can dose it for different tastes. And then finally, well, I shouldn't say finally, because we may have added a fourth way to do potatoes, but the Hasselbeck potatoes, you just preheat your oven and you. So the reason I didn't make it this time, even though I had recently discovered or I had done this episode a long time ago around Ghee and Hasselbeck potatoes specifically. I mean, when you have a catalog of 292 episodes, you sometimes forget what you've already done. You basically take a large potato and you put really narrow slits in the top all the way along the one side of the potato, and then you brush it with your ghee, salt it, and then you throw it in the oven for a little while.

Margaret 00:12:48 It's going to take a little longer than your roast potato. And then it comes out crispy and delicious. And it looks really interesting because of the way that it's been cooked with those slices in the potatoes. I'll be sure to add photos to the show notes for this, so that you can see what it looks like, and you'll probably want to try it out. I think I'll be trying it out again. I just have to dig in the bag and see if I can find a big enough potato, because the ones in the bag right now are not big enough to do these Hasselbeck potatoes, and they're pretty fun. And another beauty of that particular style of potato is if you have a couple of them, you can always brush your infused ghee on afterwards as well when it's hot and melted on top. If you want to have individually dosed potatoes, and if you're not too concerned about that, of course you can do that during the baking process, but that is a fun way to individually dose each tater.

Margaret 00:13:38 And then of course, there's frying. But you know, if I was going to do a fried potato like French fries or something like that, you could do it infused ghee, but I think you would get a lot of waste as well. So and usually it has to be at a relatively high heat. So you could do your potatoes in unenthused ghee and then. Well, I don't even know if I would use ghee afterwards, I would probably use an infused ketchup. I just did an episode not that long ago on an infused curry ketchup, but any infused ketchup would do. And then you can get your dosing that way. So that might be preferable for the fourth way of doing potatoes with ghee. So you know what? Maybe it's technically three and a half ways of doing potatoes, because you're not necessarily using the infused ghee to do a fried potato. Those are the different ways you can use ghee to make potatoes. And it really does make them taste rich and delicious and savory. And they're so good.

Margaret 00:14:29 And of course, having a good recipe, no matter how simple it is, because we often think of edibles and we think of something, you know, complicated and tricky to do or really involved. And sometimes it's as simple as sprinkling some cannabis on something that you're cooking, or it is as simple as using an infusion that you've tried and mixing it with vegetables that everybody can access, like the potato. So some of the common cooking mistakes you're going to want to avoid is if you're using an infusion, is cooking it at too high a temperature that is going to degrade the THC in your infusion. Now I'd have to recall, but if I do recall anything over 400, like you're probably pretty safe at 400 degrees. But anything over that you may be experiencing some degradation in the in the infusion and you want to try and avoid that. So just bear that in mind when you're cooking things, especially if you're roasting. Sometimes the temptation is to cook it at a higher temperature to speed up the cooking process.

Margaret 00:15:33 And I can appreciate that. But in this particular instance, if you're using a precious infusion, you're going to want to lower that temperature a little bit, extend the cooking time. And that way you're going to preserve your infusion and the cannabis to THC or CBD therein. So I guess my question to you is how is what is your favorite way to do potatoes, and how would you infuse them or make or do individual dosing. And if you let me know, I can share it on the show. I find it really interesting to learn how other people are doing their infusions and dosing their foods, especially when we're getting more into the realm of the everyday. And when I say everyday, I just mean like infusing meals because I feel like it is a little more. It is a little different. It's a little different than just making a batch of cookies and then eating a cookie at whatever point during your your day or and I. The advantage of a meal is you can infuse multiple servings at a time.

Margaret 00:16:28 And sometimes that does. That makes it a disadvantage because you're serving it to people who don't all have the same tolerance level as you do. So let me know. I would love to hear it. And of course, if you head over to join Bite me.com and you learn more about the Bite Me Cannabis Club, we can talk about it more over there as well, because that's where there's a lot of discussion happening about the podcast episodes and all kinds of other things as well. I do have a couple of interviews coming up that I'm excited about. One is already in the can, as we like to say in the podcasting biz, and another one I'm about to do. I'm really excited about those episodes, one with Michael Cool Duvalier and Vanessa Alvarado, so that is something to look forward to coming up in the not too distant future. And of course, if you have anybody that you would like me to interview, let me know, because I am not shy to ask folks, even though sometimes those requests don't get a response.

Margaret 00:17:25 That's happened to me lots of times, but it's surprising sometimes the number of people that do respond and say, yeah, sure, because bite me, bite me is a whole mood. It applies to so many different situations. It can be like sometimes I think Bite Me is kind of like is kind of like the f bomb. It can apply in a lot of different ways, and yet it's a lot less offensive. So it makes it even more versatile. Let me know how you're using Bite Me in Your Life. I think that's it for this week, my friends. Let me know what else you're using G for, if at all. If you tried that in fusion. Because I am curious. I am planning to do another recipe with it and I would love to hear how you're making use of it in your life. I'm your host, Margaret. Until next week, my friends stay high.