Video

Hello, lovelies, today I’m sharing my process to pressure can potatoes and I have a video to go with it.  I don’t know about you, but there is something satisfying about canning staple foods like potatoes, broth, dried beans, and green beans.  Don’t get me wrong, I love pickles, jam, and pie filling…but potatoes really speak to sustainability.

Before I dive into that, you may be wondering why someone would can potatoes.

Reasons to Can Potatoes

1. Abundance of Potatoes – If you have a lot of potatoes (buying in bulk or from your garden), canning is a great option to not waste your bounty.  You can make hashbrowns and freeze them, which I’ll share with you all another day but canning provides another shelf-stable, temperature-independent storage option.
2. Longer Preservation – If you store your potatoes in a root cellar, under ideal conditions, they will last around 4 to 6 months. By canning, they make it for at least a couple of years.
3. Quicker Meal Prep – With just a little more work, these canned potatoes are good to serve mashed, fried, or to add to casseroles such as my baked potato casserole.  As a sort of experiment, I may just try to use these canned potatoes in a potato salad this summer…stay tuned for those results.

Side note:  I was pretty dedicated to canning my potatoes this winter, as you can see from the flecks of snow falling on my grandma’s canner.  Ha!  (someday I will call it my canner I suppose)

Now that I’ve made my case for canning potatoes, let me show you how easy it is…

How to Pressure Can Potatoes

1. Wash and peel your potatoes.  Add potatoes to a pot or bowl of cold water so they do not brown.  Rinse.
2. Cut your potatoes up into ping pong size chunks.  You may want to have yours smaller or larger, just adust your pre-canning boil time accordingly.
3. Prepare pressure canner and jars for canning.
4. In a stockpot, bring potatoes to boil for 2 to 5 minutes (depending on the size of potatoes).  For ping pong size, I boiled for 2 minutes.  Drain.
5. Pack hot potatoes into hot sterilized jars.
6. Add salt to each jar of potatoes, 1 tsp each quart or 1/2 tsp each pint.
7. Pour boiling water into jars, leaving 1-inch of headspace.
8. Use a skewer, slide, or poke a stick into ars to remove any trapped bubbles.  Add any more water necessary to maintain a 1-inch headspace.
9. Wipe the rim of the jar with a clean damp cloth.  Place the lid on the jar and crew band onto finger-tight.
10. Process in a pressure canner for 40 minutes for quart-size jars and 35 minutes for pint-size jars.
11. Turn off heat.  Do NOT release pressure from the canner. Instead, let the canner release pressure naturally and come to room temperature before opening the pressure canner lid, at least 12 hours.
12. Remove lid, wipe down the jars of residue, label, and store.

That’s all folks!  If you can potatoes and have some other creative uses, please share below in the comments.

Blessings!