September 7, 2021, by Angela Laufer
The nights are getting cooler, yet the days are warm & sunny, and the lakes? still perfect for swimming… I’m not sure there’s a better time of year than the end of summer and the beginning of fall to enjoy a campfire meal! These campfire medicated green beans made with Cannabis Coconut Oil are an incredibly delicious way to wrap up summer with your friends and family while enjoying the great outdoors.
**Before you start making recipes using cannabis-infused ingredients, it is important to be able to calculate how many servings you will be making, and the amount of THC in each serving. The advised medicinal amount of THC for an edible serving in the state of Arkansas is 10mg, although a good starting point for ingesting cannabis edibles is to limit yourself to less than 5mg THC; even less if you are new to THC-infused food. Use our dosage calculator to help calculate the potency of your servings. **
Step 1: Prep Your Fire, Oil, Veggies & Bacon
First step’s first, you’re going to get your campfire going and rolling hot. Keep in mind that you’re using indirect heat with a Dutch oven, resting on a grate above the fire, so it’s going to need to be hot enough to both fry your bacon and sauté your vegetables. If you are using infused coconut oil, measure it out into a small glass container and keep it nearby to let it melt into a liquid.
Wash, dry, and snap the stems off the green beans. Peel, halve, and thinly slice your onion. Mince your garlic -if not using already-minced, jarred garlic- and get whichever spices you’ll be using out and ready. It’s a rather quick dish to cook, so I like to have all my ingredients measured and handy before the process starts.
Cut slices of bacon into about 1-inch pieces. (Tip: If you keep the bacon in the freezer or cooler for a while before cooking, it will be much easier to cut)
Step 2: Fry Your Bacon
The next step, once your fire is ready and the Dutch oven is placed on the grate and heated up to an ideal temperature for frying, is adding your bacon.
Note: You can omit the bacon if you’d like to make a meatless green bean dish, although I prefer to keep the bacon not only for the flavor aspect but to help make the THC and any other cannabis compound present in your infusion, more available to your body. Why does bacon fat help? Chemicals that people consume such as vitamins, supplements, and medications are either water-soluble or fat-soluble. This means that with either water or fat, these chemicals can dissolve and become bioavailable (enter circulation and able to have an active effect in your body). Because some cannabis compounds like THC are lipophiles, they need fats to bind to and become bioavailable. This is also why coconut oil is such a great carrier for edible compounds, as Coconut oil is around 90% saturated fat.
Now, back to the bacon. (:
Evenly place bacon pieces in your Dutch oven and fry, stirring occasionally with tongs until nearly cooked through. Remove bacon and place on a paper plate or paper towel-lined plate, keeping the bacon grease in the dish for the green beans.
Step 3: Sauté Your Veggies & Spices in Infused Oil
With the bacon grease still in the Dutch oven, add in your washed and trimmed green beans, as well as thin onion slices and minced garlic. Pour your melted, infused coconut oil (or grapeseed oil) over the green beans and spice to taste with your desired seasonings.
I used black truffle Pacific Sea salt, lemon pepper, garlic pepper, cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper, and fresh ground black pepper. Yes, I love pepper! See “Terpenes: Part 2- Beta-Caryophyllene” to see just what physiological and medicinal properties pepper can offer. Using your tongs, toss your vegetable to coat them evenly in oil and spices. Cover, and let cook for 5-10 minutes, or until green beans are nicely cooked, yet still crisp.
While we’re on the topic of the physiological and medicinal properties of our food, here are a few fun facts about green beans:
Suffering from anemia, fatigue, or weakness? Green beans contain about twice the amount of iron as compared to spinach. If you are struggling with anemia, fatigue, weakness, or low metabolism -then green beans are the magical food you may need.
Great for skin & bones. Green beans are loaded with an easily absorbed type of silicon, which is important for the formation of healthy connective tissues, strengthening nails, and boosting skin health. While vitamin K activates osteocalcin, which is the main non-collagen protein found in bones. This compound locks calcium molecules together inside the bone, strengthening it from within.
Heart health <3 Green beans pack abundant amounts of calcium and heart-protective flavonoids; immense anti-inflammatory properties, preventing blot clots in your arteries.
Rich in vitamins A, C & K, a good source of iron, a heart-protective chock-full of calcium and fiber…green beans are among the most nutritious vegetables you can eat!
Step 4: Add Bacon & Finish Cooking
Once your beans are about ready, add in your nearly cooked bacon pieces to let all the flavors come together. Sauté for another 3-5 minutes to ensure thoroughly-cooked bacon and infusion of flavor. Season with more spices if necessary. Give a few more tosses with your tongs to evenly distribute ingredients, including your infused oil, and take off the heat.
ENJOY!
If you would like to bake this dish in the oven instead of campfire-style, just bake at 425°F on a single baking sheet for about 25 minutes, stirring halfway. (:
Cooking with Note: I made my medicated coconut oil with Banana Hammock, an Indica-dominant hybrid. Another idea on infusing coconut oil -if you want to bypass the decarboxylation process- is by using grapeseed oil. Currently, you may be able to find grapeseed oil by online ordering, in same-day pick-up, in both 50 and 1000 mg. Grapeseed oil has a high flashpoint so you can utilize it in many other meals, it’s measured by a syringe or eyedropper which creates ease in dosing, and it’s already “activated”/decarboxylated, so no baking or conversion through heat necessary!
Cannabis-Infused Oil:
A good starting point for ingesting cannabis edibles is to limit yourself to <5mg THC; even less if you are new to THC-infused food. It can have the tendency to be a lot stronger, more intense, and can differ drastically from smoking it. For one, the effects can take anywhere from a half-hour to 3 hours to fully metabolize, depending on an individual’s unique body and metabolic rate. In addition, because the THC is digested through your liver, and can therefore more readily cross the body’s blood-brain barrier, the high can be stronger and last longer.
With that said, your edible’s potency depends on many factors, from how long and hot it was cooked, to the potency of your starting product, as well as taking into consideration if your strain was Indica or Sativa leaning. To test the potency and effect of your finished product, try a small amount to begin with, and see how that dose affects you after an hour or so. Titrate your dose as desired, and you can then use this personalized “standard” dose as a baseline for your recipes.
**Check out our dosage calculator for help in calculating your edible’s dosage @:
https://www.plant-family.com/thc-dosage-calculator/**
Happy Cooking
Download Printable PDF: Campfire Medicated Green Beans Recipe