Brenda Nolen

Yesterday, I canned my first batch of potatoes. I will be canning both red potatoes and sweet potatoes. I purchased two 10 pound bags of red potatoes (I figured this was the best choice, since the only other option was russet potatoes) and two 10 pound boxes of sweet potatoes.

This was one of the easiest things to do! I left the skins on, cut them in half or quarters (depending on their size), and followed the directions here: http://jordansfarm.wordpress.com/2008/08/23/canning-potatoes/. They all sealed beautifully and only two sucked up some of the water (the jars are about half full of water) so those will be used first (miss paranoid here).

The 20 pounds of red potatoes filled 19 quart jars (with a few left over so I could enjoy them with dinner) and 20 pounds of sweet potatoes filled 14 jars (actually 16 but I did not want to pressure can 2 jars so mashed sweet potatoes were for lunch and dinner the next day).

Further down on the web page above page is instructions for canning sweet potatoes. That is how I will be doing the sweet potatoes tonight:

Sweet Potatoes canned:

Boil first for about 5 min. so as the skins will rub off.

Leave small ones whole/ or cut,

Pack into jars

Fill with water or med. syrup (med. syrup: 3 1/4 cup sugar and 5 cups water= 7 cups syrup)

Leave 1 inch head space, remove air bubbles

Pressure can 10 pounds for:

Pints: 1 hour 5 minutes
Quarts: 1 hour and 30 minutes

I packed in syrup but a light syrup instead. I went looking around for light syrup recipes that would allow me to incorporate honey. I found this page (http://www.pickyourown.org/sugarsolution.htm), and it turns out you can replace half the sugar with honey! That’s what I did!

I love fresh sweet potatoes but after seeing how the red potatoes bleached out (no longer red) I am afraid of blah, bland sweet potatoes. I have not tried the sweet potatoes yet but last night we had corned beef hash with the canned red potatoes. I cubed them, put plenty of oil in the pan, let it brown without moving it around much, then removed them from the pan. We added them back right before the eggs were set. They tasted wonderful! They did not have that canned potato smell when we opened up the jar, and tasted just like boiled potatoes right out of the jar!