Ten Must-Have Cannabis Cookbooks for Your Kitchen

Harvest season and fall weather are just around the corner, which for lovers of cooking and cannabis means it’s time to get busy in the kitchen. We’ve shared a few of our fave cannabis kitchen cookbooks here, including some classic revolutionary books and Vermont-based authors.

We highly recommend contacting a nearby independent bookstore for a pickup and supporting your local businesses! Check out this independent book store finder – local bookstores are more than happy to order whatever you’re looking for and even suggest further reading. In addition, we’ve provided direct links to the author or publisher sites for purchase where possible. 

BLACK FRIDAY SALE-$50 off the MB2E & 20% off all kitchenware.

Want more reading on this subject? Check out staffer Kathyrn Blume’s recent review of Alia Volz’s Home Baked, the story of her mother’s journey from Milwaukee good girl to San Francisco pot brownie maven.

Brownie Mary’s Marijuana Cookbook and Dennis Peron’s Recipe for Social Change, Mary Rathbun and Dennis Peron, 1996

Can a weed brownie change history? There’s a case to be made that Mary Jane Rathbun’s legendary pot brownies, baked for AIDS patients in 1980s San Francisco, helped to push medical marijuana into the mainstream. Her classic cookbook does not contain her famous brownie recipe (she hoped to sell it and share the proceeds when weed became legal), but captures a moment in history through news snippets, and offers a manifesto for cannabis activists.

Limited purchase options available outside Amazon. We recommend searching for a free PDF online (click carefully!) or purchasing through your local bookstore.

The Art of Cooking with Cannabis: 125 CBD and THC-Infused Recipes from Across America,  Tracy Medeiros (Vermont Author)

More than a cookbook, The Art of Cooking with Cannabis is a valuable resource for new inspiration and excitement surrounding cannabis, food, and responsible consumption. Vermont-based chef, speaker and author Tracey Medeiros introduces the reader to dozens of organic farmers, award-winning chefs, artisans, and food producers who are leading the green revolution by doing their part to demystify cannabis and its culinary use. 

The book includes 125 mouthwatering recipes featuring CBD, hemp, and THC from organic farmers, award-winning chefs, artisans, and food producers across the country. Individual profiles contain stories from the book’s contributors who come from rural and suburban communities and bustling cities across this nation. Though it’s not out yet, it will be released in April of next year and is available for pre-order now.

Preorder Now: Amazon Hardcover ($24.99), Kindle ($16.99)

Cannabis Cocktails, Mocktails and Tonics: The Art of Spirited Drinks and Buzz-Worthy Libations, Warren Bobrow

One of the newest ways people are enjoying cannabis is by combining it with cocktails and mocktails. This is especially popular at dinner parties in the many states where cannabis has recently become legal for adult use. But, with a strong taste and a particular method of infusion necessary, beginners may not know how best to make cannabis cocktails. 

This book has a collection of 75 cannabis drink recipes by “The Cocktail Whisperer” Warren Bobrow. It also includes a full history of cannabis as a social and medicinal drug. You will find recipes not only for cocktails but for shrubs, bitters, butters, oils and even coffee, tea and milk-based drinks for the morning hours. This is a really fun book for anyone who loves drinks and cannabis.

Find Where to Buy: IndieBound.org

The Cannabis Kitchen Cookbook: Feel-Good Food for Home Cooks, Robyn Griggs Lawrence

Published in 2015 by a Colorado writer and photographer, this cookbook collects recipes from a dozen chefs and one bartender who specialize in cannabis-infused food. Before the recipes, there’s a 100-plus-page section that provides biographies of the chefs and discusses many aspects of buying, identifying and cooking with cannabis, covering cooking cultivars, details on infusions and extractions, plus dosing tips. There’s a longer section on how to make the oils and butters and tinctures than in many books; it also includes recipes for infused milk, cream, honey and simple syrup, all of which makes the recipes that follow succinct. The dosage per serving is clearly stated, and the recipe headnotes often include nicely geeky bits, such as how mangoes are reputed to heighten the effects of cannabis because they’re high (ha-ha) in myrcene molecules. Thus a recipe for rice pudding with green cardamom, mango and pistachios.

Buy it now: Sky Horse Publishing, $17.99

The Official High Times Cannabis Cookbook: More Than 50 Irresistible Recipes That Will Get You High, by the editors of High Times Magazine

High Times Magazine is well known and definitely well loved by marijuana aficionados all over the globe. They have been reporting on cannabis culture for decades, and have become the world leader in cannabis entertainment. They even have their famous Cannabis World Cup each year, which draws thousands of enthusiasts to sample different strains and celebrate cannabis in all of its different forms.

They have struck culinary gold with The Official High Times Cannabis Cookbook, which features foods from many different cultures and for all occasions, from munchies to Thanksgiving dinner. Some of the recipes include Time Warp Tamales, Sativa Shrimp Spring Rolls, Pico de Ganja Nachos and Pineapple Express Upside Down cake. This cookbook is a must have for any home chef who wants to bring cannabis to their table.

Buy it Now: HighTimes.com, $18.95

The Vegan Stoner Cookbook: 100 Easy Vegan Recipes to Munch, Sarah Conrique

The Vegan Stoner Cookbook is a favorite on this list, because it includes easy vegan recipes that do not take a lot of cooking knowledge to prepare. Vegans can get the short end of the stick much of the time when it comes to cooking with cannabis, as most recipes fall back on the old standard cannabutter to add THC to their recipes.

Of course, you can always sub vegan butter or oils, but most recipes also include meat, other dairy, or eggs as well. Instead of buying a regular cookbook and having to veganize all of the recipes, try out this easy cookbook with recipes that feature accessible ingredients and cute illustrations to go along with them.

Bong Appetit: Mastering the Art of Cooking With Weed, by the editors of Munchies

This book, based on the Munchies and Viceland television series “Bong Appétit,” was published in October by Ten Speed Press. This is in itself notable, as Ten Speed is one of the best cookbook publishers around, continuing the legitimate trajectory of the cannabis cooking genre. 

The book has a comprehensive introduction that includes topics such as dosing, techniques, methods of decarboxylation and infusion, cannabis pairing tips, questions to ask your dispensary, tips on equipment and more. The recipes are sourced from the Munchies test kitchen and from many well-known chefs, whose recipes are recalibrated to add cannabis. Thus: Korean fried chicken from Deuki Hong of San Francisco’s Sunday Bird; fried soft-shell crab with shishito pepper mole from Daniela Soto-Innes of Cosme and Atla; and (my favorite) Joan Nathan’s preserved lemons. 

The Munchies test kitchen also has some fun ones, including herb focaccia with, well, herb; and confit octopus, in which a whole octopus is poached in cannabis-infused olive oil. If that sounds too aspirational, there are instructions for making an apple bong — a hollowed-out apple filled with weed-infused mezcal — at the end of the drinks chapter.

Buy it Now: Penguin Random House, $30

Edibles: Small Bites for the Modern Cannabis Kitchen by Stephanie Hua with Coreen Carroll

“Edibles” is a recently-published, user-friendly cookbook in a few notable ways: There is a lengthy and well-defined introductory section that discusses dosage, potency, effects, terminology and techniques. The 30 recipes that follow are purposefully low-dose (5 milligrams per serving), which is very helpful for beginning cooks, as well as those with a potentially problematic sweet tooth (Stephanie Hua is a confectioner at a marshmallow company; she and Coreen Carroll met at culinary school in San Francisco). 

The recipes are also a lot more appealing than those in many cannabis cookbooks, which can tend to run a little toward dorm food. Hua and Carroll instead give well-written recipes for cardamom caramels, gruyère and green garlic gougères, strawberry jam Pavlovas and roasted grape crostini. The blueberry lemon French macarons are a serious dessert upgrade from pot brownies.

Buy it Now: Chronicle Books, $19.95

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, 1954

Facing the deadline for her cookbook, Alice B. Toklas asked friends for help, and Brion Gysin supplied a recipe for “haschich fudge”— a treat based on majoun, a traditional Moroccan sweet. Toklas didn’t notice that “canibus” was the key ingredient, and when the recipe was published, controversy erupted. Most of the book is a tapestry of memories and musings from the author’s life with Gertrude Stein, but the world-famous fudge holds a special place in weed cooking lore.

Buy it Now: HarperCollins Publishers, $16.99

Cooking with Herb, Cedella Marley

Take your tastebuds on a trip to Jamaica from your own kitchen in this collection of 75 family recipes helmed by Cedella Marley. Providing a personal peek into growing up with a legendary musician as a dad, she shares the foundation for a green, clean and healthy lifestyle that Bob Marley instilled in this brood. Along with the basics for making your own infused oils, the book is brimming with Caribbean flavors along with tips for incorporating the herb into an overall wellness routine. 

Find Where to Buy: IndieBound.org