How to cook with cannabis without the smell

Do both hot steps in water, sealed, and open nothing until it has cooled. The sealed route costs nothing: a sealed decarb converts 85–95% against the oven’s 85–95%, and a closed mason jar transfers 60–80% into the fat against an open pot’s 40–60%. The quiet way is also the better way.

Every fat method on this site already infuses in a closed jar — cannabutter included — so following those pages gets you most of the way. The step most people still do in the open is the decarb. The infusion calculator lists the sealed water-bath decarb as an option, so the numbers follow whichever way you do it, and every way of decarbing is compared side by side.

• A mason jar in the oven. It is everywhere, and the jar’s maker says not to: Ball says its jars are not tempered for oven use and advises against baking in them. Canning glass is made for water baths, so use it in one.
• An oven bag. Reynolds tells you to cut slits in the top so the steam can escape. Used as directed, the bag vents. It takes the edge off the smell; it does not contain it.

Sealing a step does not destroy what you would have smelled. It keeps those compounds in the jar, and the most delicate of them would otherwise have left during the decarb. So butter made the contained way tastes more of the flower.

That is good news if you chose your flower for its flavor, and the terpene pages say which aromas survive which kind of cooking. If you would rather taste less of it, the answer is the recipe, not the method: chocolate, coffee, peanut butter and warm spices all sit over it comfortably.

• Let it cool first. The decarb bag all the way; the infusion jar until it is warm but still liquid, because butter and coconut oil set at room temperature.
• Strain it warm, not hot. It still pours, and gives off a fraction of what it would straight out of the bath.
• Cook something that needs no oven. Baking with the finished butter vents the oven again, though mostly of the food by then. The no-smell recipes skip it entirely.
• Ventilation helps, but it comes second. An extractor fan and an open window move the smell out. Containing it means there is much less to move.

What is the least smelly way to make cannabutter?

Decarb the flower sealed in a sous vide bag or a closed canning jar in a 203 °F water bath for 90 minutes, then infuse it in a closed mason jar in a 160–190 °F water bath. Let the bag cool completely before you open it, and the jar until it is warm but still liquid. Done that way, the kitchen barely smells at any point.

Can I decarb in a mason jar in the oven?

Not according to Ball, which says its jars are not tempered for oven use and advises against baking in them. Dry oven heat is not what canning glass is made for. Put the closed jar in a water bath instead, which is what it is made for.

Does an oven bag stop the smell?

It cuts it, but it does not contain it. Reynolds tells you to cut slits in the top so steam can escape, so a bag used as directed vents into the oven. Sealing it shut is not how the bag is meant to be used.

Does a slow cooker smell?

Yes, for hours. The lid is not airtight, so it leaks steadily the whole time. It is gentler than an open pot, but it is not a low-smell method.

Do the finished edibles smell?

Much less than the process does, and mostly of the food. How much of the flower comes through depends on its terpenes: the peppery, woody ones survive an oven, while the bright citrus ones are largely gone before the butter is even made.

• Ball Mason Jars, FAQs
• Penn State Extension, Say no to oven canning
• Reynolds, Cooking in oven bags

Temperatures, times and the conversion and transfer figures come from the same constants every calculator here uses, written out on how this is calculated.