Method
How do I make infused avocado oil?
Avocado oil sits between olive and grapeseed: less assertive than olive, rounder than a true neutral. It is unsaturated, so it holds cannabinoids marginally less readily than butter or coconut, and as with every carrier on this list that gap is smaller than the difference between a sealed jar and an open pot. What it buys you is a fat that tastes of almost nothing and stays liquid cold, which is exactly what a dressing or an emulsified sauce needs.
How to make it
- 01
Decarb the flower. Break it up coarsely by hand or with a grinder, spread it in a single even layer on a parchment-lined sheet, and bake at 240 °F for 30–45 minutes.
This converts THCA into THC — without it, most of what you have stays inactive. 240 °F converts 85–95% of what is available. Longer is not safer: past the peak, THC starts turning into CBN and the loss does not come back. Set a timer.
- 02
Combine the decarbed flower with the avocado oil at about 28 g per cup.
1 oz flower per cup of fat is the conventional starting point, not a rule. Using half that gives you a gentler infusion, which is often what you actually want.
- 03
Hold it at 160–190 °F for 2–4 hours, stirring occasionally.
This is a long warm soak, not a simmer. Above about 200 °F you start boiling off terpenes and pushing THC toward CBN — if it is bubbling, it is too hot. Sealed, so nothing evaporates off. Also the low-smell option.
- 04
Strain through cheesecloth into a jar. Let it drip on its own — do not squeeze the cloth.
Squeezing forces plant particulate into the avocado oil and is the single biggest cause of a grassy-tasting infusion. What is left in the cloth is not worth what wringing it costs you.
- 05
Cool, then store it cold and dark. Label it with the date and the strength you calculated.
Light, air and heat all degrade it slowly. An unlabeled jar of infused avocado oil in a shared refrigerator is how people get dosed without consenting to it.
Notes on avocado oil
- Stays pourable in the refrigerator, so it goes straight from the fridge into a vinaigrette or a mayonnaise without softening first.
- Buy refined rather than unrefined unless you want the grassy note. Refined is also cheaper, and nothing about the infusion needs the extra flavor.
- Its high smoke point is irrelevant to an infusion. Cannabinoids come apart long before the oil does, so this is still a finishing fat.
- It is the most expensive oil here by some margin. If the fat is going to be masked by garlic and herbs anyway, grapeseed does the same job.
How strong will it be?
That depends entirely on your flower, and this page cannot tell you. What it can tell you is the shape of the answer: of the cannabinoid you start with, decarb activates most of it and this method transfers roughly 57–76% of that into the avocado oil.
Put your own numbers in and you get a range in milligrams per tablespoon, with the assumptions printed beside it — then every recipe here rescales itself to match.
Questions people ask
- Is avocado oil better than olive oil for infusing?
- Not stronger, just quieter. Both are unsaturated and behave almost identically in a jar. Choose avocado when an olive note would be wrong — in a ranch dressing or a mayonnaise — and olive when you want to taste it.
- Can I use it for high-heat cooking because of the smoke point?
- No, and this is the most common mistake with avocado oil specifically. A 500 °F smoke point tells you when the oil starts to burn, not when the infusion survives — and it does not survive anywhere near there. Sear in plain oil and add the infused oil off the heat.
- Will it separate in a dressing?
- Only as much as plain avocado oil would, which is to say it will, and that matters more here than usual. An unshaken bottle sends most of the dose to whoever pours last. Shake it hard every single time.