Taco Tuesday
High(ten) Up Your Tex-Mex.
By Matt Campbell
Photography By Sara Reeves
For the home chef looking to try a hand at cooking with cannabis, few things lend themselves as well to experimentation as Tex-Mex food.
There are several reasons for this. Tex-Mex recipes do not have to be complex to be delicious, which makes it easier to try slight changes without ruining the finished product. Strong flavors and spices can help cover up certain flavors for people who don’t love the taste of cannabis. The fat content in many classic recipes can help shorten the time from eating to activation of the THC once ingested. Ingredients in Tex-Mex cuisine are frequently cooked separately from one another, or even served without cooking at all, avoiding the risk of overheating the cannabis products, which would degrade the THC content.
Traditionally, cannabutter and cannabis oil have been the most common ways to add THC to regular food. But making those at home can be tedious and smelly. Enter Leafology’s new line of THC-enhanced seasonings.
Armed with one packet of “Terpy Taco” and one of “Chili Lime,” my fiancée, Jess, and I set out recently to have a different kind of Taco Tuesday. First things first, we needed to do a little math. (It’s good that the only math involved came at the beginning.)
Each 36-gram packet contains 30 1.2-gram “servings,” and one serving of the Terpy Taco has 7.5 mg of THC. A serving of Chili Lime has 6.32 mg. We were making classic, crunchy tacos and homemade Cheesy Gordita Crunches and wanted each to have 10-15 mg of THC. We decided to use the Terpy Taco seasoning in the ground beef, the pico de gallo and the spicy ranch sauce (on the gorditas only).
After cooking the ground beef with a normal taco seasoning, we segregated out four tacos’ worth and added 4.8 grams of Terpy Taco, stirring it in completely. We added 2.4 grams of Chili Lime to a quarter cup of premade pico de gallo from Edwards Food Giant, and 2.4 grams of Terpy Taco to four tablespoons of spicy ranch. This worked out to 10.8 mg of THC per regular crunchy taco and about 14.5 mg per gordita, which meant 25.3 mg for each of us.
The average activation time for the seasonings is about 45 minutes, according to the packaging. That was pretty accurate. Jess reported the first tingle of a high 38 minutes after we ate, and it was in full swing well before the 1-hour mark.
We both found the high to be a nice, fairly mellow, full-body experience. It was similar to what you’d expect from an indica-heavy gummy of a similar strength. Gummies frequently give me anxiety as a side effect, but, while your experience could certainly be different, I am happy to report having no trace of any negative effects from these seasonings.
About the only negative thing either of us noted was the high was relatively short-lived when compared to other 25 mg edibles. It was much more akin — in duration, at least — to the high you get from flower or live resin. Of course, when getting high again simply requires eating another taco, maybe a short-lived high is exactly what you want.
Recipe for
Homemade Cheesy Gordita Crunch
- 4 oz. taco meat, seasoned and drained
- 4 tbsp. sour cream
- 2 tbsp. Ranch dressing mix
- 3 tsp. hot sauce
- ½ of a medium lime
- 2 tbsp. pico de gallo
- 2 crunchy taco shells
- 3 oz. finely shredded Mexican cheese blend
- 2 small flour tortillas (roughly the same size as the crunchy shells)
- ½ c. shredded lettuce
For the shell: On a microwave-safe plate, place both soft taco shells and evenly top each with half of the cheese blend. Microwave on high for 10-15 seconds, until the cheese starts to melt. Place the crunchy shells in the middle of each tortilla and fold the sides of the tortilla up to meet the crunchy shell.
For the spicy ranch sauce: In a small bowl, mix the sour cream, ranch seasoning, hot sauce and the juice from half a lime.
Assemble: Spread 2 ounces of taco meat in the bottom of the shell. Top with ¼ c. shredded lettuce, 1 tbsp. pico de gallo and 2 tbsp. of spicy ranch (spoon on or use a small squeeze bottle).
Makes 2.