Has anyone ever canned potatoes in mason jars?

[Gary350]

Tonight we cooked the last jar of canned potatoes. Potatoes were fried in a hot skillet with about 2 tablespoons of oil. Stir and flip over on all 6 sides until cooked golden brown. Potatoes taste very good. We will make more of these.

This was an interesting experiment. It turns out smaller potatoes get soft and stick together then cook up like a golden brown potato pancake. Golden crispy brown potato pancakes taste good but were not originally intended to be potato pancakes. Larger size potato pieces did best. Be sure to leave about 10% space for potatoes to expand inside the jars.

We need to do another experiment with 1 teaspoon of lemon juice in the jars with the potatoes.

We also need to experiment with canned potatoes in stew and soup.

[Lize]

Hi Gary350, Just curious to know if you ever tried the lemon juice or vinegar? I tried adding vinegar to my soaking water once for canning hash browns (to keep them white). As you stated, they came out of the jar like a solid blob, so I decided to turn them into mashed potatoes. Problem was they never would get tender, no matter how long I cooked them. I thought it might have been because of the vinegar. Thoughts?

[pepperhead212]

Funny you should mention this now - Milk Street Magazine just had one of those questions at the end of the magazine Off The Air in which someone asked why it seemed their potatoes would never get tender, when they cooked them in a tomato based soup, or other dish. They said thought it might be the acid, so they did an experiment, with vinegar, and lemon juice, and cooked the potatoes in each (didn't say how much they were diluted - just said the LJ was more acidic), and they would not tenderize. Their explanation was that the pectins toughen, from the acids, even more so in the Yukon gold, and more in waxy types. So adding a little acid will help those stay a little al dente, for salads, and the like, and is probably why with some vegetables, such green beans and asparagus, we sometimes see a tb of vinegar called for in the boiling water - to crispen them some.

Their suggestion - cook first, then add at the end. I wonder if adding some acid to the jar water, after cooking the potatoes almost all the way, would keep them from getting mushy? Only one way to find out - experiment!

[Meadowlark]

Yes, absolutely. They are wonderful. I like to can the small ones and use the larger ones fresh. We raise well over 200 pounds per year and in my hot and humid East Texas climate it is difficult to store them much beyond three or four months. These pictured below are 2019 crop.