Cannabis Cooking Class Featured on NBC's The Today Show

The team at My 420 Tours was thrilled to greet the NBC cameramen for a special cannabis cooking class last Friday. We were then featured on The Today Show in a story about the booming edibles industry.

“Here, they cook with marijuana.” NBC’s Today Show anchor Kerry Sanders marvels in a commercial edibles kitchen to open a segment on the big (and growing!) business of cannabis edibles in Colorado. He’s referring to the kitchen, but he could have been talking about Colorado’s creative cannabis culture in general. Or he could have been referencing the My 420 Tours Cooking with Cannabis Class, which got a favorable mention in the segment.

Sanders’ next stop is an upscale farm-to-table dinner in Northern Colorado, where hosts delight their guests with several courses of fresh cuisine, each paired with a different cannabis strain. This is the new normal in Colorado, where post-prohibition weed culture finds flavorful alternatives to smoking and vaping. Edibles, it seems, are the way of the future.

“A Sea Change”

The legalization movement has taken hold, with no signs of slowing. To date, eight US states have legalized cannabis for recreational use, while 29 states have given medical use the green light. According to the research group Arcview, total cannabis sales across the US is growing fast and could top $20 billion by 2021 — up from the $8 billion of this year.

Next in the segment, we visit the factory of superstar edibles company Dixie Elixirs and hear from founder Joe Hodas. He uses phrases like “flavor profile,” “artisanal,” and “high end” when describing their various confections — a huge step up in sophistication from the homemade pot brownies of the past.

cannabis cooking class

Start Low and Go Slow

By comparison, Boulder-based edibles company The Growing Kitchen, which has picked up on a new trend — micro-dosing marijuana. Their small-dose “chill pills” allow experimentation with dosages that are even lower than the usual 10mg of THC per serving of edible. As founder Brooke Wise notes, the best way for individuals to find the right dose for them is to “start low and go slow.”

This sage advice brings viewers into the cannabis cooking class kitchen of My 420 Tours. Our very own cannabis chef, Patrick Bailey, explains to his students about methods of decarboxylation and how to make sure homemade edibles don’t leave you in a state of couch-lock for the rest of the day.

A Big Day for Cannabis Cooking Class

Although brief, our appearance on national network television was a big deal over here at My 420 Tours. When we got the call from NBC’s The Today Show, they gave us just two days’ notice to stage a cooking class on a Friday afternoon. Normally, the class runs on Sundays at 11 am. Up for the challenge (and 15 minutes of fame), we mobilized to recruit camera-friendly students to fill the cooking school. On the menu: our signature Elevated Chicken and Waffles.

In the end, we pulled it off. We gathered fourteen friends ranging from family members to industry allies. An excited buzz filled the kitchen as NBC’s camera crew rolled in and started shooting. Patrick worked his usual magic, and the students manned each cooking station to get their hands dirty. They added the carefully measured canna-butter to each of the meal’s dishes. Once everything was ready, the group lined up to fill their plates with the fruits of their labor.

Cooking with Cannabis is one of our most successful and longest-running activities at My 420 Tours. It was hugely gratifying to have our best-in-town cannabis cooking class validated on The Today Show. We can’t wait to bring even more canna-curious cooks into our elevated kitchen.

cannabis cooking class