Canning Sweet Potatoes

This recipe for canning sweet potatoes is perfect for preserving, and having a ready-to-eat side dish on your pantry shelves!

Just because it’s fall doesn’t mean you have to stop canning. Every season of the year has unique canning opportunities.

In the summer, we have probably the most variety of fruits and vegetables, and in the fall we have a lot of opportunities like canning deer meat during hunting season. This is also when we tend to process our chickens and can chickens.

Fall and winter are great times to can various foods like home-canned baked beans, apple pie filling, spreads like apple pie jam, and instant pot apple butter.

And let’s not forget sweet potatoes.

Why can sweet potatoes?

Traditionally, potatoes are expected to be over-wintered in a root cellar or attic. Unfortunately, not all of us have a good setup for that or live in a good area.

And more than that, it’s always nice to can some food to have on the shelves for convenience, and that includes sweet potatoes. These are the same reasons we can butternut squash as well.

Ingredients needed for canning sweet potatoes

As you probably already know, canning sweet potatoes doesn’t take very many ingredients – just the potatoes or yams and salt.

You can choose any sweet potato variety you prefer for canning. The most common types of sweet potatoes are Beauregard’s and Georgia Jets. My personal favorite is Murasaki, which is a purple-skinned, white sweet potato that is more starchy than the traditional varieties. Many more varieties come in the traditional orange, white, and even purple.

The other ingredient, salt, also seems to come in many varieties. I use Redmond Real Salt most of the time, but any non-iodized salt will work.

Equipment you’ll need

As with other vegetables and low-acid foods, sweet potatoes need to be pressure canned, so your canning equipment will be a little different from fruits and tomatoes, such as canning strawberries and homemade salsa.

Pressure Canner. Whereas water bath canners reach the boiling point, pressure allows for much higher temperatures, ensuring that harmful bacteria that can grow in vegetables are killed during processing. Today’s pressure canners are quite safe and easy to use. If you don’t have one yet, it’s one of the best investments you can make in your sustainable home kitchen.

A simple Presto pressure canner is a great place to start.

Canning Jars. Canning jars are typically thicker and shatterproof than many other jars. While thinner-walled jars can be used, canning jars such as ball canning are an investment that will last longer and hold up through more wear and tear and pressure canning. Back when mayonnaise used to be sold in glass jars, we would reuse the jars as canning jars (since they had the same size lid), but only used them for water bath canning to minimize the risk of breakage. That said, reusing store-bought jam jars, etc. is a choice for you to make for yourself.

Canning lids. When you buy new canning jars, they typically come with a set of lids, but after that first use, you will need to start buying replacement lids. A number of canning companies sell replacements, but I like to get mine from Denali. Their lids are very high quality and are guaranteed to seal.

Canning funnel, jar lifter, etc. There are a lot of little tools available for canning, but the only one I find truly necessary is the canning funnel. It takes a lot of work and mess out of filling jars. While canning sweet potatoes is going to be one of the less messy, and easier recipes to can without a mess, a funnel still helps make the process quick and easy. A jar lifter is nice to have, mostly for when you need to move jars that are still hot out of a water bath canner. Since we’re using a pressure canning, you can use a towel if you need to remove hot jars and don’t already have a lifter. Other tools such as a lid wand, I find completely unnecessary. That’s partly because I don’t put my lids in hot water before using (Shh! Please don’t tell the officials.)

How to can sweet potatoes

The main thing you need to be prepared for with canning sweet potatoes is that they must be canned in chunks, not canned as a puree. While most sweet potatoes are canned in chunks, as opposed to pumpkin, which is commercially sold as canned puree, it still needs to be said very clearly. 

The reason for this is that with home canning, a solid-packed puree is very difficult to reliably heat sufficiently to kill 100% of the harmful bacteria that can make your food go bad. Remember: We have a much less controlled environment than commercial canners, with less finely tuned equipment.

Canning in chunks with water surrounding those chunks allows the heat during canning to penetrate evenly and safely preserve your sweet potatoes. Read more at the National Center for Home Food Preservation. 

I also find it much more simple and doable to cold pack jars rather than using the hot pack method. Again, it saves a lot of time and dirty dishes.

So here’s the step-by-step approach:

1. Peel sweet potatoes. There are two methods for this. The Ball Canning guide recommends parboiling the potatoes and then slipping the peelings off. The other way is to simply peel them with a knife or peeler. In the video below, I demonstrate both ways, but I much prefer simply peeling them. It’s faster, saves space on the stove and more pots, and frankly, you don’t have to deal with boiling water, and frankly, it’s just easier. When you’re canning diced tomatoes, or peaches, using hot water to loosen the skins works really well, but sweet potatoes are a little different.
   
2. Cut the sweet potatoes into 1-1 1/2 inch cubes. This is best done on a cutting board with a chef’s knife.
   
3. Pack sweet potatoes loosely into canning jars, leaving about 1-inch headspace.
4. For pint jars, top with 1/2 teaspoon of salt. For quart jars, add one teaspoon.
5. Fill jars with water, covering sweet potatoes and leaving about 1/2 inch headspace.
   
6. Wipe the jar rim with a clean cloth to remove any debris, and screw down lids and rings.
7. Prepare the pressure canner according to the manufacturer’s instructions. This usually involved adding about two quarts of water to the canner and always involved adding a rack into the bottom to hold jars away from the bottom of the pot.
8. Arrange jars into the canner so that they aren’t touching. They may be almost touching, but you’re just trying to keep them from bumping into each other and breaking.
9. Secure the lid onto the canner with the steam valve open, and heat over medium-high heat until a steady stream of steam is escaping the valve.
10. Allow the team to continue escaping for ten minutes, then close the valve and bring the canner to ten pounds of pressure for those at sea level. For those above sea level, use this conversion chart to adjust your pressure for altitude. If you have a dial gauge pressure canner, you will be able to use precise pressures, if you have a weighted gauge pressure canner, you can round up to the nearest five. 
11. Once needed pressure has been reached, process pints for 65 minutes and quarts for 90 minutes. 
12. When the process time is done, remove the canner from heat and allow it to return to zero pressure on its own. Open the steam valve before removing the lid to be doubly sure the pressure has returned to zero before opening the lid.
13. If you must remove jars from the canner before they have sufficiently cooled, do it carefully, covering them with a towel to protect them from drafts that could cause them to break. Be sure to protect yourself, using the towel to shield yourself as well in case the jar does break. This is pretty rare, as canning jars are designed to withstand extreme temperatures, but they are still glass, and caution should be taken.
14. Once jars have completely cooled, check seals, and wash (if needed), then store in a cool place out of direct light. I recommend waiting 24 hours to do this to give the jars plenty of time to settle.

That’s it! Despite my hot jar fear-mongering, canning sweet potatoes is a very simple process and allows you to have a nutritious vegetable at your fingertips for quick use.

How to Use Canned Sweet Potatoes

Before using canned sweet potatoes, make sure they pass the visual test. Your sweet potatoes should be properly colored (orange if using orange sweet potatoes), with minimal graying and certainly no mold growing on them. 

Secondly, do they pass the smell test? After you open the jar, your sweet potatoes should smell like… sweet potatoes. No foul odors. 

After that, put them into a pan and bring them to a boil for 3-5 minutes, then drain well, and then proceed to use as you prefer:

Some ideas are to:

• Candy them using maple sugar, brown sugar, honey, etc.
• Mash with vanilla, butter, and/or salt for a side dish.
• Make sweet potato pie.
• Make sweet potato casseroles with them.
• Sweet potatoes are also excellent in soups, such as a substitute for butternut squash in this butternut squash soup recipe.

Other canning recipes for you:

• How to can carrots
• How to can beets
• Canning pinto beans
• home-canned chicken soup
• How to Can Potatoes

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