Canning potatoes

If you remember, early in May I put up a blog post asking for reader input on canning potatoes. You all came through beautifully in sharing your wisdom.

Well I just tried canning them myself, and what do you know … they came out very well.

Ironically, the day I canned potatoes was a day I had absolutely no interest in canning. Our weather has done a great big celestial 180 degrees this week, and we went from cool and rainy to hot and dry. Who wants to can anything in hot weather?

But I needed photos on canning potatoes to provide to Backwoods Home Magazine for an article I just submitted, so despite the heat, I canned potatoes.

I started with 15 lbs. of red potatoes, which are often the preferred variety to can because they’re less starchy.

Cutting into chunks. It’s hard to tell, but the cut-up potatoes are in a bowl of water to prevent discoloration until they got blanched.

Getting ready to blanche the potatoes by adding citric acid to the blanche water (1 teaspoon per quart of water).

Blanching (about 10 minutes).

Draining.

Filling the jars.

Adding salt.

Into the canner. Because this project was more for the photos than for food storage, I used disposable lids.

Bringing the canner up to pressure. I processed the quarts for 40 minutes.

Voilà: Seven quarts of canned potatoes. Now that I know how easy it is. I’ll probably can more potatoes in the future.

Interestingly, I had a little over two quarts of potatoes left that wouldn’t fit in the canner (my canner only holds seven quarts at a time.

I was griping to Older Daughter how pointless it was to go through another round in the canner just for two and a quarter quarts of potatoes, when by happy coincidence she mentioned she needed potatoes to make some potato salad for a recipe she was trying. What luck!

Here’s her potato salad:

So thank you to everyone who contributed their experience when it came to canning potatoes. Despite choosing one of the hottest days of summer to try it out, I’m pleased to add something more to my canning repertoire.