Recipe: Now you can make your own weed pulled pork sliders

The response to our review of Dank Godz medical marijuana edibles was certainly mixed. Some did not appreciate the tone of the piece, while others delighted in our experimentation with cannabis. We understand the differing opinions. The topic is still quite controversial here in Michigan, with lots of folks (and our local governments) unclear on the impact of this new industry.

Controversy aside, others have been really curious as to just how we came up with the recipe for the pulled pork sliders. It's actually a question we weren't sure we could answer ourselves when we set out to make them. Do you toss the BBQ sauce in the crock pot at the beginning? Will letting it cook all day weaken the strength of the THC? How much sauce do you add, without it turning you into a zombie for 12 hours straight? Will the pork taste more like weed like some of the other edibles we sampled (the cannabutter in the cereal bars left a strong aftertaste, kind of as if you had just taken a toke and chewed into a Rice Krispies treat at the same time), or will it keep its flavor?

To get the formula just right, we first looked up a simple crock pot pulled pork recipe, one that didn't require too many ingredients (we didn't want the flavor of the sauce to be overwhelmed by too many other spices). We found an easy one on Chowhound. We stayed true to the ingredients, but made a few tweaks in the preparation, considering the special ingredient we were working with.

Here's the original, non-pot recipe:
-2 medium yellow onions, thinly sliced
-4 medium garlic cloves, thinly sliced
-1 cup chicken stock or low-sodium chicken broth
-1 tablespoon packed dark brown sugar
-1 tablespoon chili powder
-1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus more as needed
-1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
-1/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
-1 (4 1/2-5-pound) boneless or bone-in pork shoulder (also known as pork butt), twine or netting removed (we went with slightly less, about 4 pounds)
-2 cups barbecue sauce (optional)
-1-2 packages of King's Hawaiian buns
-McClure's garlic relish (optional)

Pat the pork shoulder dry with a paper towel and then coat with a spice rub of dark brown sugar, chili powder, cumin, and cinnamon. Toss sliced onions, garlic, and chicken broth into the crock pot and place the meat on top. Cook for five to seven hours on high. Once it's cooked, remove meat from the crock pot and set on a surface where you can shred it up with two forks, taking care to remove excess fat. We recommend waiting a short period to let it cool. Place the drippings and onion in separate container. Once the meat is pulled, place it back in the crock pot. NOTE HERE, the major tweak: the original recipe calls for two cups of BBQ sauce. For the weed-infused one, we used the two small vials provided at Dank Godz, which equated 300 milligrams of THC. Add the sauce to the meat and blend. For added juiciness, we took those extra drippings, and slowly added in about a cup to a 1 1/2 cups, making sure to remove the film of fat from the surface first. Continue mixing in drippings to reach desired juiciness. Place on low to warm to maintain heat.

When filling the buns, one or two heaping forkfuls of pork should be ample enough, topped with optional relish or slaw. The amount of THC per serving really depends on how much you use per slider. To give you an idea of the THC content, we turned to The Cannabist, a Colorado-based column that allows readers to ask all manner of weed-centric questions.

Here, dosage is explained in general terms:

Every 1 gram of cannabis bud has 1,000mg of dry weight. If a strain has about 10% THC, ten percent of 1,000mg would be 100mg. So for cooking or baking at home, it is safe to assume that a gram of cannabis contains at least 100mg THC.

Using (Summit County-based author of “The Ganja Kitchen Revolution” Jessica) Catalano’s dosing measurement formula, you do the math accordingly to find out how much THC per serving. Take the amount of ground marijuana, convert it to milligrams and divide it by the recipe yield to determine a per-serving dose of THC. A starting dosage for beginners is 5 milligrams per serving (the Colorado-mandated serving size for marijuana-infused edibles is 10mg THC). Three grams of ground marijuana equals 300mg THC. 

What does that means in real terms, you ask? If you have 300mg divided by the recipe yield, (a classic cookie recipe makes 60 cookies) then each cookie contains an estimated 5mg of THC. In this case, a slider's worth of our pulled pork may equate closer to 10-plus milligrams.