Last spring I bought seed potatoes with one goal in mind: Grow enough to feed my family for a year. Lofty, I know, but I had done the math, overbought on seed just to be sure, and planted in perfect weather (it was a warm, dry spring last year as opposed to the cold wet one the year prior where our seed rotted in the ground not once, but twice), and despite struggling with Colorado Potato Beetles, I harvested and weighed the bounty. I declared a success!
My Experience
I had grown over 300 pounds of potatoes, while my target had been 280 pounds- enough for 5 pounds per week which was pretty much what we had been buying from the store.
To properly cure my potatoes, I bought several wooden apple crates to stack them in and stored them in the (unfinished) root cellar.
I don’t know if the ground wasn’t cold enough to chill the cinder blocks because it hadn’t frozen yet, or if it was that repairs made to the wood burner in the basement were a little too successful and the basement isn’t quite so cold as it has been in years past, or because someone put bushels of apples in the same area for a week or two before I discovered them and freaked out, but whatever the reason the potatoes all sprouted a couple of months after they were put up.
Which left me with probably close to 200 pounds of potatoes to either toss into the compost or get busy preserving. I’m sure you all know me well enough to know I chose the latter.
Many of the little new-sized potatoes (You know, the ones the kids had been instructed many weeks ago to bring to me first because I knew they’d go bad the soonest?) were far gone and had to be thrown into the compost pile. The rest I’ve been flicking eyes and figuring out what to do with them. Mostly I just dehydrated them or pressure-canned cubes, but there are many other creative ways to preserve them. You can also try some yummy potato recipes like Sweet Potato Sour Cream Donuts, Sweet Potato Pie, and Potato Salad.
{How to Preserve Potatoes Without a Root Cellar}
• DIY Dehydrated Potato Flakes (for instant mashed potatoes)
• Make Your Own Frozen Hashbrowns
• How to Freeze Mashed Potatoes
• Homemade Tater Tots (with instructions for freezing)
• Make & Freeze Pierogies (This recipe looks really good!)
• Prepare and Freeze Slow Cooker Meals
• And, of course, there is always pressure canning them. These would be great in Fresh Corn Chowder!
Suggested Read: How to Can Superior Meat Stock or Broth
{How to Pressure Can Potatoes}
How to Can Potatoes (Plus 10 Other Ways to Preserve Them)
Ingredients
- potatoes, about 20 pounds
- salt, if desired
Instructions
- Remove the eyes and peel the potatoes.
- Chop them into pieces and place them in a large bowl or sink full of cool water to prevent oxidation. Some places say to add lemon juice, but I found it wasn’t necessary.
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add the potatoes, and parboil them for a couple minutes.
- Drain the water and rinse the potatoes with hot water to remove starch. (Unless that sort of thing doesn’t bother you.)
- Spoon the cubes into clean quart-sized mason jars and fill the jars with hot water, leaving 1″ headspace.
- If you’d like, add 1 teaspoon of salt to each jar.
- Wipe the rims and then top the jars with clean rings and lids.
- Pressure can according to manufacturer’s directions at 10 pounds of pressure for 40 minutes.
What is your favorite way to put up potatoes?
You could rinse the potatoes and save the water; dehydrate the potato water and have homemade potato starch for thickening up sauces and gravies.
Great idea
Great idea 🙂
I'm always impressed with your harvets numbers! I've been researching a lot and looking for reliable yeild per row in lbs. numbers for all kinds of veggies. There are official lists (Excel PDFs) for "per 100 ft row", which are helpful, but of course this is related to commercial growing. Would you share how many plants or ft of row you put in to get 300 lbs.? (I used to eat less than 5 lbs of potatoes a YEAR, until we moved to Minnesota, lol).
Thanks for sharing those ideas for ways to 'put them up'. I have great luck with growing, but since I'm in CA, can't rootceller. They ALWAYS sprout before I can eat them all up. I'm almost tempted to cut a whole in my floor and see if putting them under the house will make them last longer.
I was reading on another blog ( if you're interested I can find the source ) that ALL potatoes are sprayed with a harmless gas that inhibits sprouting, then they are SEALED into their potato cellars ( which are different to root cellars ). This is the ONLY way to keep potatoes unsprouted and "fresh " for any length of time apparently. Of course you get around that by preserving. But yeah. I was interested in the gas thing!
That doesn't surprise me at all and makes perfect sense. The potatoes we had were homegrown this year and some varieties hold better in storage than others. (These were Dark Red Norlands. Good eating but not so hot for storage. I was quite surprised to see that the All Blue potoates, despite being smaller in size, held their quality longer. It was interesting seeing their violet colored sprouts though when all other potates are whitish 🙂 )
How, exactly do you “dehydrate” a liquid? (potato water)!!!
They most likely meant “reduce” the potato water.
I don’t have a pressure canner. Can I do this in water bath ? Any idea how long I would cook it? Thank you
Sorry, potatoes are a low-acid food and they have to be canned in a pressure canner for safety.
Add citric acid, vinegar or lemon juice and then you can water bath
How much lemon juice? Also how long are they good for after canning?
Thank you soooo much for the recipe