Kitchen Staple

Canna Oil

Infuse with Flavor and Purpose

Oil is cooking’s greatest common denominator. Infuse oil with flavor and cannabis, and your head just might explode with joy.

That’s because oil serves multiple purposes. The obvious: It prevents food from sticking to the pan, allowing browning and a crust to form. The less obvious: It can finish a dish. Extra virgin olive oil, for example, adds richness. Imagine how incomplete salad would taste without it. It adds flavor, too. Restaurant chefs drizzle it onto crudo, or pizza before it’s slid into a wood-burning oven.

Olive oil’s flavor might be naturally peppery, fruity or compellingly bitter. For more pronounced flavor, herbs or spices are infused into neutral-flavored oils.

A drizzle of infused oil benefits leaner foods the most, providing a desirable mouthfeel. Think of shallot or thyme oil for finishing dishes right off the grill: shrimp, pork tenderloin, chicken breast, vegetables or corn on the cob.

Adding cannabis to flavored oil makes medicating food more efficient and healthier than butter. No one’s dissing butter; cannabutter and canna oil each have a rightful place in the pantry. But for summer grilling, infused and flavored oils are hard to beat.

Get the Shallot Canna Oil, Chile Canna Oil and the Garlic and Herb Canna Oil recipes now

—Laura Yee