Canning Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes keep well in storage at 55-60F. Even my sweet potatoes that have all those insect tunnels in them. However they don't store well at higher temperatures. They tend to sprout. My basement sweet potato storage got up to 60F during the last warm day. So I figured that I'd do a batch of canned sweet potatoes. I didn't want to do all of them. I figure I can eat fresh ones for about a month or two more. But sometime in June they are all going to sprout.

So I went about chopping and peeling a lot of sweet potatoes. The traditional method is to put the whole potato in boiling water for a while. The skins slip off that way and you don't have to peel as much. But I needed to chop out a lot of flaws in my potatoes. So I just peeled with a peeler. In fact I picked the worst flawed of my sweet potatoes to chop up since I had to chop them anyway. Sweet potatoes are hot packed. So after rinsing the potatoes well I brought them to a boil before packing them in my hot jars.

I didn't know how much to chop up, but it turned out I did a good job of estimating as the above was what was left over after canning a full pressure canner of pints. That is 16 pints of sweet potatoes. I think a lot of people would use quarts for this, but my husband won't eat them, so it is just me. A pint is plenty for most things.

Only two pints didn't seal well. They are in the fridge. Do you notice the end jar that looks cloudy? I was wondering what would happen with the purple sweet potatoes. Right after canning they were very pretty. The purple color streaked through the jar. But after cooling they lost all color and are just muddy. Ick. I'm sure they will taste fine, but they don't particularly look pretty. They aren't pretty when I roast them either. They turn almost black. I've found that if I bring a dish to a party, I'd better have mostly orange ones in the dish as people won't even try just the purple without explanation. However my favorite in taste is Purple, so I'm going to keep growing them. At least the white ones turned a bit yellow so they blend nicely into the orange ones.

I still have trouble with pressure canning. I find the water in the jars siphon out. I let the canner cool down slowly to prevent it. But still it happens. Anyone have any hints? Next time I might just leave 1 1/2" of head space to compensate more. Or at least only fill up the veggies to 1 1/2" so any siphoning won't leave the food uncovered.