How to Make Home Cooked Hemp in 5 Easy Steps

Hemp is one of the all-time great baits. From carp and barbel to roach and dace, pretty much anything that swims will feed on it. You can use it as loose feed or on the hook all year round, with the only downside being that if you use a lot of it the cost can soon mount up.

Cooking Hemp for Fishing

Hemp is available cooked and in tins that will last for years if unopened. If you do use a lot of it, though, preparing your own at home can be a lot more cost-effective and it is easy to do!

What Do I Need?

• Some uncooked hemp.
• A pan
• A sieve
• Water
• A mug
• A timer
• A stove

TOP TIP: We’ll warn you now if you can cook your hemp outside on a gas burner then do so because it can whiff a bit!

1.) Measure out a mug of uncooked hempseeds (that’s more than enough for a day’s fishing for roach, for example) and riddle off any small, unwanted particles and pick off any large stalks and other foreign objects.



2.) When cleaned up, put the hemp in a saucepan and cover with water. The pan needs to be large enough to take four times the amount of water that there are seeds. So one mug of hemp requires four mugs of water.



3.) At this point, you can add a dash of bicarbonate of soda (a teaspoon is enough). This will help the hemp to take on that classic dark shell colour, but it will also show you when the hemp is cooked properly.

4.) Put the hemp on the stove and bring the water to a boil. Now leave it roughly half an hour or until it looks cooked. The shells will open to reveal the little white shoots, plus the shell will go a dark black/brown if you’ve added the bicarb.



5.) Use a sieve to drain off the water. Now run the hemp under the cold tap to cool it down and stop it from continuing to cook. Your hemp is ready.



TOP TIP - Keep the Juice! If you can, keep the water that the hemp was cooked in. A lot of people just chuck away the juice but this is where all the rich oils and sugars are released from the seeds throughout the cooking process. This juice is an awesome addition to groundbait and stick mixes, especially for targeting silverfish. This Hemp juice is also excellent when used to rehydrate and wash out boilies. It adds complex dimensions and stronger food signals to any bait or mix.

Give your home-cooked hemp some edge...

Hempseed is a great carrier so you can flavour it with a whole world of different additives that not only add to the effectiveness of your seed but also make it individual to you. Once cooked you can add ingredients like Betalin, chilli powder, salt, turmeric, and a wide range of liquid eatables can be used to help boost or ‘pimp’ your hemp into a secret recipe!

View all Baits and Additives. 

For more Hemp Tips, view our Top 5 tips post here. For more bait ideas, watch our Bait Kitchen series over on ADTV.

As seen in ...