Sweet potatoes are a great thing to have on hand for soups, side dishes, and especially during the holidays!! And since they usually go on sale in the fall, this is a great time to stock up and can enough for the whole year!
Read on to get the full details on how to can sweet potatoes for your well-stocked pantry!
As with all vegetables, sweet potatoes have to be pressure canned. If you have never done that before, it can be a little overwhelming and even scary to thing about trying!
Rest assured, it is a simple process that you can quickly master. Read my step by step guide on pressure canning if you are new to the process – this post will not be as in depth 🙂
How to Can Sweet Potatoes
Last Fall I found a great deal on organic sweet potatoes at Sam’s Club of all places! They were about $1.52 a pound, so I bought 50 pounds!
By buying in bulk and canning them, I saved a ton as they are usually $3.65 a pound during the rest of the year. That’s a 59% savings!!
While canning sweet potatoes does take about 3x longer to process per batch compared to carrots, it was worth it to save all that money and have such a nutrient dense food available to us during the year.
They especially come in handy during the holidays! Sweet potato casserole never tasted so good as when you use home canned sweet potatoes and a healthy topping of homemade marshmallows!
So when you’re looking for great deals on food and you see those sweet potatoes on sale, grab them up and get to canning!
How to Can Sweet Potatoes
Ingredients
- 2-3 pounds sweet potatoes per quart
- Sugar
- Water
- Pressure Canner
- 5-7 Quart jars
- Canning Tools
Instructions
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Peel the sweet potatoes and rinse off excess dirt.
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Dice no more than 1 1/2 inches thick.
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Pack into hot, clean jars. Leave 1 inch headspace.
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Make syrup at a ratio of 2 1/4 cup sugar to 5 1/4 cup water. Bring to a boil. (You may need to double the amount of syrup, depending on how many pounds of sweet potatoes you are processing.)
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Ladle boiling syrup over sweet potatoes, leaving 1 inch headspace.
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Remove air bubbles with canning knife. DO NOT use a metal utensil as it can cause the jar to break under pressure.
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Add lids and rings.
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Process quarts for 1 hour and 30 minutes at 10 pounds pressure in a pressure canner.
Recipe Notes
Pressure cookers and pressure canners are not the same thing. Read my full pressure canning guide here.
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Caitlin says
What is the purpose of the sugar in the canning?
Victoria says
Hi Caitlin! In general canning (water bath, jams and jelly) sugar is used as a preservative. However, in this recipe it’s used to help preserve the flavor of the sweet potatoes. Without the sugar the sweet potatoes lose a lot of their flavor.
You can remove the sugar from the recipe though and it is still safe – You might just try it both ways (1 jar each) to see which you prefer and then do a bunch of whichever you like best 🙂
Jen says
Why so much longer to pressure can sweet potatoes than carrots? No one seems to know the answer to this. I would think they would be about the same.
Victoria says
Hi Jen! Just as sweet potatoes take a lot longer than carrots to bake and become soft, so they do too in the canning process.
Canning heats the food under pressure to a safe temperature to kill bacteria. Due to the fact that sweet potatoes are a much more dense and starchy food than carrots, they require more time to get to that safe temperature all the way through.
Hope that helps!