Canning Sweet Potatoes – Sustainable Cooks

Follow this step-by-step tutorial to learn how simple Canning Sweet Potatoes can be. Having canned sweet potatoes on hand means your favorite soups, stews, side dishes, and roasts can be ready in a flash. 

Imagine a life where you can crack open a jar of home-canned sweet potatoes and suddenly, 50% of your dinner is prepped and ready to go.

Thanks to this tutorial on how to can sweet potatoes, you can have that life. It’s yours.

While this post is specific to sweet potatoes, if you’re looking for a tutorial on canning white or baby potatoes, check out our post on how to can potatoes.

Liquids for Canning Sweet Potatoes

You are able to safely can sweet potatoes with either water or a sweetened syrup added to the jars. Using water allows you to use sweet potatoes for savory dishes, but syrup can increase the shelf-life and quality of the canned product.

The photos shown in this post demonstrate using water to hot pack the jars, but you’ll find guidelines for using syrups below.

How to Can Sweet Potatoes

*I’ll walk you through it here with some photos and tips, and you’ll also find a printable recipe card at the bottom of the post with exact measurements, etc. You can also click “jump to recipe” to skip down.

Canning Prep

Wash and clean your jars. It is no longer necessary to sterilize jars before canning (hurray!) but you should make sure they are preheated enough to not crack when placed in hot water.

You can put them in a clean dishwasher and run them through a quick wash cycle, or place them in a large pan with some water in a low-heat oven (my lowest temp is 170˚F degrees) until you need them. I’ve even just put hot tap water in them before and left them on the counter.

Wash your lids with hot soapy water. Rinse and place them in a clean bowl for now.

Preparing Sweet Potatoes for Canning

You will need to cook the sweet potatoes prior to canning them, and there are two main ways to prep them.

You can peel them before cooking them, or peel them after cooking them. I find it easier to prep them once they have been peeled, but before they’re cooked, and that’s what you’ll see in the photos in this post.

Choose small to medium sweet potatoes that aren’t sprouting. Ideally, you’ll want to can them within 1-2 months of harvesting.

Wash the potatoes and then steam or boil them until soft. Personally, I find it easier to peel them, cut them into cubes, and then steam them in a large saucepan with a steamer insert. But, you can also boil them if that works better for you.

Filling the Jars

Add 3 quarts of water to your pressure canner and put it on a burner set to high. Make sure there is a canning rack in the bottom of the canner.

Fill a separate medium to large saucepan with clean water and bring to a boil. This will be used to fill the jars prior to canning.

Add the hot sweet potato cubes to the jars. Pro tip: wiggle the jar often as you add them to allow them to settle and make room for more. You can also gently tap the jar on the counter as you fill them.

Using a canning funnel, carefully and slowly add the clean boiling water (do not use the same water you used to cook the sweet potatoes) OR syrup, leaving 1 inch of headspace. Headspace is the distance between the top of the food and the top of the jar. 

Using a long utensil (I prefer a plastic chopstick), remove all the air bubbles from the jar.

Clean the rim of the jar very well with a hot damp rag. Any food debris left on the rim may impact the seal of the lid in the canner.

Place a clean lid on the jar. Add a ring, and tighten them to fingertip tight.

Canning Sweet Potatoes

Using canning tongs, gently place the jars in the canner. Lock the lid. Soon, steam will start coming through the vent pipe (I call it the steam chimney). Allow the steam to pass through for about 10 minutes. Then put the pressure regulator (I call it the chimney cap) on top.

Pretty soon, the air vent will pop up. That is a sign that you’re starting to build pressure inside the canner (get excited. This is happening!).

Processing times will vary based on altitude. See the chart below.

When the dial gauge reaches the appropriate PSI, reduce the burner temp to medium, and start your timer. The pressure must stay at the PSI or (a little bit) above for the duration of the cooking time. You’ll likely need to adjust the temp on the burner a few times depending on your stove.

When the time is up, remove the canner from the burner and allow it to sit until you hear a distinctive “click” of the air vent dropping. Remove the pressure regulator and carefully remove the lid of the canner. (Pro tip: I always use oven mitts when I take the lid off because the steam is super hot).

Let the jars sit for 5 minutes in the canner and then carefully lift them out with canning tongs. Pro tip: allowing the jars to sit in the canner with the lid off can help reduce the siphoning of liquid in your jars. Siphoning is when liquid seeps out from under the lids and reduces the overall amount of liquid in the jar.

Place hot jars on a towel where they can sit undisturbed for 12 hours.

After a few hours, to check for sealing, gently press down in the middle of the lid. If the lid has no give, it’s sealed. If you can press the lid in and it pops a bit, your jars are not sealed.

HELP! WHY ARE MY JARS LEAKING Water or Syrup?

If you find that liquid has leaked out after the jars have sealed, you have experienced a common canning issue called siphoning. It happens to the best of us!

Siphoning is typically caused by not allowing the jars to rest in the canner after they have finished processing. In the directions, you’ll see that I recommend you remove the canner from the burner, remove the lid, and let it sit for 5 minutes.

This is important as it allows the jars time to rest before being allowed to cool on the counter. Doing this process will significantly cut down on siphoning.

IF YOU HAVE SIPHONING IN YOUR JARS, FOLLOW THESE STEPS:

• Check – are the lids still sealed?
• Look – have you lost less than half of the amount of liquid in the jar?
• Examine – do the sweet potatoes look fresh with bright colors?

If the answer to the above three steps is “yes!”, then they are safe to eat. If you lost quite a bit of liquid, the uncovered sweet potatoes will turn color more quickly. Plan to eat those jars first.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Use Canned Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are amazing in any recipe where you’d use white potatoes.

Quickly cook some organic grass-fed beef and stock in the Instant Pot (ala Whole30 Beef Stew) and add in a jar of canned sweet potatoes and a jar of canned carrots when it is done cooking.

You can also use them in Instant Pot Lentil Soup, Cream Cheese Mashed Potatoes, Sweet Potato Casserole With Pecans, or Wasabi Mashed Potatoes.