Pressure Canning Potatoes

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One of our local grocery stores had a great price on potatoes last week - 50 pounds of relatively locally grown potatoes for only $5.98.  I just couldn't pass up on that price.

But, since we haven't got a root cellar I knew I'd have to come up with some method of long term storage.  I thought about dehydrating them, but we already have some that we dehydrated a while back.  Instead, I thought of pan fried potatoes, southern style hash brown potatoes, quick cooking mashed potatoes, etc.  I knew that canning was how I'd preserve these potatoes.  It would be so convenient being able to open up a quart jar of canned potatoes and quickly mix together a potato salad.

Canning potatoes is a pretty simple process. First, you peel the potatoes.  I keep my potatoes under water as I work with them to prevent browning.  This is a trick I learned back when I was an undergrad working in my university's cafeteria kitchen.  One of my assigned tasks, believe it or not, was peeling potatoes.  We had a machine - sort of like a rock tumbler - that took a lot of the peel off but students did the finish peeling.  As we peeled the potatoes we put the peeled ones in a clean trash can on wheels filled with water.  It still amazes me that the college cooked homemade mashed potatoes for over 5,000 students.

So...here you see a bowl full of my peeled potatoes.



After I had a bunch of the potatoes peeled, then I cut them into chunks.  It varied depending upon the size of the potato, but they were roughly quatered.



Then I was ready to can them up.  I ended up peeling and chopping about 25 pounds of potatoes and ended up having room to can about 22 pounds or so in this batch.

I warmed up the canning jar lids in a small saucepan on the stovetop.



I warmed up a pot of water.  This was boiled and was the water I used to pack the potatoes in the jars.



I warmed up the quart jars by filling them with water and putting them in the pressure canner.  When pressure canning you only need to fill the bottom of the canner with about 1"-2" of water.  You'll need to read the instruction booklet for your pressure canner for exact instructions for your canner.



Then I laid out the rest of my equipment.  In this picture you'll see a bowl of canning salt, rings for the canning jars, funnel, ladle, canning jar tongs, magnetic lid lifter, clean cloth for wiping down the rims of the jars, and the chopped and peeled potatoes.



Then I began to fill the jars.  I'd lift one of the warmed jars out of the canner, empty the water into the sink and fill it with potatoes.  I filled the jars to about 1" of the top.  For me a good visual is to fill to below the rings on the jar.



I added about 1/2 teaspoon of canning salt to the jar and then filled it with some of the boiling water.  Again, I filled to just about where the rings began on the canning jar.  That left about 1" headspace in the jars.



Then I wiped down the rim of the jar with the clean cloth.  I lifted a warmed lid out of the saucepan using the magnetic lid lifter and placed it on top of the jar, centering it in the middle.  I placed a ring on top of the lid and tightened it down.



Then I put the filled jar into the canner and removed another jar.  I repeated those steps for each of the seven jars for this canner. 

I ended up using both of my pressure canners and filled 14 quarts of potatoes.

When seven jars were filled I put the lid on the pressure canner and tightened the lid down.  I turned the heat on the burner to high and waited to see steam coming out of the vent pipe.  When I saw a steady stream of steam coming out of the vent pipe I set a timer for 8 minutes.  That time period is what is referred to as venting.  After that time had passed I put the weight on the vent pipe set at 10 pounds.

I waited for the pressure gauge to read 10 pounds and set a timer for 40 minutes.  At my altitude quart jars of potatoes process for 40 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.

After 40 minutes had passed I turned off the heat on the burner and waited for the pressure to return to zero on the pressure gauge.  I waited just a few minutes after that and then removed the lid from the pressure canner.

I used the canning jar tongs to remove the jars of potatoes and put them on a piece of cardboard on the countertop to cool.



After the jars cooled I removed the rings and checked to see that the lids had all sealed properly.  Then I washed down the jars and marked them with the contents and date.  They're stored in a cool dark spot until we're ready to use them.