canning potatoes

One of our potato beds was looking a bit rough the other day and dying off quicker than I like to see. Rather than lose the crop  or wonder and worry about what was wrong with  it we decided to harvest that bed. After  curing them for a couple days it was evident that these potatoes were not going to store well long term, so today we canned them up.We got 15 quarts canned, enough cooked for a week or so of  meals and have another 20 or so pounds to use over the next months or two. The rest of the beds will be dug around the fourth of July,  hopefully they will look a bit  better than this crop did.

I normally can  just the smallest potatoes and can them whole but this year I used various sized spuds. I do not peel them  when I can them. The peels slough off in the canning process and they are easy to pick  out if you do not like them in what ever recipe you are using the potatoes in. This peeling nonsense take a lot of time and wastes good  nutrients. I rarely do just one canner full of anything so time becomes a  big issue for me. I do not dice my potatoes either. I leave them in larger pieces, pretty little cubes all of uniform size is just too weird for me. Once I got my taters the size I wanted , I washed until clean.

Jars, rings and lids were all sterilized, Next, I just chuck my taters in, add a teaspoon of salt fill with  hot water, make sure air bubbles are out, cap and process in the pressure canner for 45-50 minutes at 11 pounds of pressure. I add 5-10 extra minutes of time  what is usually recommended   because  I also skip the blanching  process. I find by skipping the blanching my potatoes do not turn  in to mush during the processing, that is another reason I do not make too small of pieces. Mushy watery potatoes are not my thing.

 Now this is just my way of doing things. I have never made any of us sick using the methods I do  but I have been canning since I was a small child. I know what I can get away with and can't. For those that are just beginning to can  your own  vegetables I recommend following UGA's  canning guide. They also have a wonderful  home food preservation website that I highly recommend to anyone starting to preserve their own foods.