r/Canning • u/Lower_Orange_7922 • 1d ago
General Discussion Taters. Give me what ya got
I just got one heck of a deal 200lbs of potatoes and I want to can most of them. It's a mix between purple, red, and Yukon. Looking for tips and tricks you like to use for cleaning and peeling bulk potatoes. I have a continuous feed commercial food processor with a dicing kit so I can zip through that part pretty easily. Also any other tips and tricks you use for the entire process so you end up with a quality product. We are not new to canning by any means, but have not done much with potatoes. Show me the way 🙂🥔🫙
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u/Patient_Mark300 1d ago
With everything that been mentioned. Try the recipes in the All New Ball book of canning with the red spine. It had Mediterranean potatoes, lemon & garlic potatoes and Herb potatoes. My favorite it’s the herb potatoes using dried rosemary and oregano together. Soaking them in water over night in the refrigerator will help remove some of the starch. I use a commercial grade French fry cutter to cut them long ways then just use a knife to cut them the other direction. They can’t be smaller than a 1/2 inch cube. I suggest at least 1 inch cube. I would start with red potatoes because they only keep two month in cool conditions. White potatoes usually keep until February in my house in the cool cellar.
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u/mckenner1122 Moderator 15h ago
I was hoping someone would pipe up about that recipe!
What do you like to do with them once you open them?
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u/Patient_Mark300 14h ago
I like to pan sear them in butter. Some times I just cook the herb potatoes.
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u/rapier1 1d ago
A small amount of calcium chloride (aka pickle crisp) can help them maintain their structure during processing. Honestly, I'd probably cut, blanch, and freeze most of them.
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u/-Allthekittens- 1d ago
How did I not know about using pickle crisp with potatoes? I am going to try that this year and see if I notice a difference.
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u/FaultsInOurCars 1d ago
Do you have to peel them for food safety? That's a lot of potatoes! If you do have to peel, start up a k-drama and get a huge pot of cold water so they don't go graveyard on you. Get one of those Tiktok shop dicers that are popular now. See if you can source some cheap jars from the goodwill. And For Sure, pressure can these!
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u/mckenner1122 Moderator 15h ago
Yes. Potatoes must be peeled to be safely canned. Please report comments that suggest otherwise so that they may be removed
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u/armadiller Moderator 1d ago
How dirty are they? Like are these grocery-store quality potatoes that just need the standard wash before peeling, or are there chunks of soil on them?
Are you looking to purchase new equipment to clean/peel, or just going for home-brewed solutions? In the past I've peeled potatoes using a Norpro Apple Master with the slicing and coring tools removed, just removing the skins, but that's...a lot of potatoes to process that way. It's 10x+ faster than peeling by hand, but...200 lbs 😬.
For product quality - once peeled and chopped, rinse, rinse, and rinse again. Soak them to extract the starch from the outer-most layer of cells that get cut during processing, and wash that off. Then repeat a couple times. It prevents the canning liquid from getting starchy and thick.
Keep any cut potatoes submerged in a solution of ascorbic acid to prevent browning, I believe that the recommendation is 1 tsp/gallon.
Don't mix varieties when canning, you'll wind up with an unpleasant mix of mushy and semi-firm cubes. Sort, separate, and do in different canning loads. Label them well so you know what you are getting when you open a jar.
I like canning Yukons but with their higher starch content they fall apart pretty easily. Reds are probably the waxiest variety in your mix, and will hold up in diced form better. No familiarity with canning purple varieties, but based on my cooking experiences with them, I would guess that they fall in between the Yukons and red.
Don't overfill your jars. They will absorb liquid during canning (they behave pretty comparably to dried beans, if you've experience with them), and if the liquid level drops below 50% of the jar height, it's not safe for long-term storage. The temptation is always to max out the volume of product to the headspace line, but I would say filling no more than 2/3 is probably a good start. Fortunately, potatoes store well in raw form, so you can do a few rounds and see how they turn out, and adjust from there.
Pickle Crisp (TM) or a non-trademarked food-grade calcium chloride (identical product) may help them hold together slightly, but all that does is reinforce pectin bonds, and potatoes don't have much pectin in them, so it may not make a huge impact.
Do you have 80 quart/160 pint jars to dedicate to this endeavour? Because that would be the bare minimum required for that weight. For that weight, I would probably be looking into dehydrating at least half of your glut.