Potatoes are a miracle food and provide all sorts of benefits to any meal they grace. But whether you buy them at a farmer’s market or grocery store or grow your own potatoes, it can be challenging to store tubers without spoilage. Knowing how to preserve potatoes for long-term storage frees you up and allows you to include potatoes whenever you want to use them.
Having a reliable method for preserving potatoes grants you peace of mind. This guide shows you the best way to preserve potatoes in your freezer or on your cellar shelf. We offer recommendations on how to preserve sweet potatoes and regular potatoes and give you tips and recipes using a variety of processes.
All our storage recipes result in delicious and unblemished vegetables and help you and your loved ones maintain a healthy diet. With our potato preservation options, you win the battle against decay and sprouting.
How to Preserve Sweet Potatoes and White Potatoes
If you have an abundance of potatoes, whether you grew them yourself or you picked up a bushel at the farmer’s market, it’s important to have some storage options or most of your bounty will spoil.
You likely have conflicting information on the right way to store potatoes, and you might be wary of exposing them to low temperatures. However, the answer to the question, “Can you freeze raw potatoes?” is an unqualified yes. With care, your potatoes won’t suffer damage in the freezer and have a shelf life of at least a few months.
When storing potatoes it’s important to only preserve the freshest tubers. When are potatoes bad? You’ll know if you have a spoiled potato. They are wrinkled, have sprouts, are mushy, and often smell terrible if they are past their prime. Throw these potatoes away.
Preserving Potatoes – Cold Storage Options
We offer storage solutions that don’t require you to expose your potatoes to warmer temperatures. With these recipes, your vegetables stay fresh, delicious and ready for use in French fries or casserole dishes. The frozen spuds suffer no ill effects and are ideal for use in cooking.
Freeze Raw Potatoes
The simplest means of cold storage for your spuds is to freeze them while they’re raw. Raw potatoes convert some of their starch into sugars when stored at freezing temperatures, but they’re still perfect for both main and side dishes.
Always start with young and healthy potatoes to ensure you get unspoiled Yukon Golds, red potatoes, russets, or other potato varieties after thawing them.
Peel off the potato skins and trim any discolorations. Cut the potatoes into large chunks and add them to a pot of boiling water to blanch them.
After five minutes, move the potatoes to an ice water bath. Dry the potatoes, place them in plastic bags, remove as much air as possible, and label the containers with the date. Store the bags in the freezer.
Follow much the same process to preserve green beans in the freezer, as well as many other vegetables.
Store Mashed Potatoes in the Freezer
Freezing raw potatoes is a simple process, but that approach requires you to do some cooking after you thaw the veggies. Freeze your mashed potatoes for a quicker solution. Mashed potatoes are already cooked and perfect for the freezer.
Boil your potato slices for five to ten minutes, until they are soft enough to mash. Drain the potatoes. Add butter, cream, and seasonings to taste, mash the mixture, and let it cool.
Place a scoop of mashed potatoes in each freezer bag, and mark the bags with the date. Mashed potatoes have a storage life in the freezer for up to six months.
Ferment and Freeze Potatoes
Fresh potatoes contain lots of starch and require processing before placement in cold storage. Blanching raw potatoes takes care of this requirement, as does cooking mashed potatoes.
It isn’t necessary to expose potatoes to heat to get them ready for their long, cold nap, though. Fermenting your potatoes gets the job done just fine.
Combine the potato slices with the cayenne, ginger, and onion. Sprinkle salt over the potato mixture. Wait a few hours, and then move the mixture to an airtight container.
Weigh the potatoes down to keep them below the brine that forms. Cover and store the container in a spot that stays below 65°F.
After one or two weeks, move the potatoes to freezer containers. Label the containers and store them in your freezer. The frozen and fermented potatoes are perfect for soups and similar meals.
Of course, people have been eating fermented cabbage for centuries. This is likely the best way for preserving cabbage for later consumption.
How to Preserve Potatoes
Using your freezer as a storage medium is beautiful if you’ve got the room, but not everyone has the required freezer space for this solution to be a viable option.
Fortunately, potatoes are excellent candidates for preservation methods that don’t need a freezer or cold temperatures. If you have shelf space in a dark place in your home, you can preserve potatoes.
Storing Potatoes at Warmer Temperatures
We close by showing you ways of storing potatoes in the pantry or root cellar. With these recipes, there’s no need to rely on a freezer or fridge to do the preserving work.
Our information on the storage processes helps you store your spuds the traditional way and allow you to enjoy potatoes all year long.
Store the Potatoes in a Root Cellar
Root cellars have been around for as long as people have lived in houses. A root cellar provides a dark and cool spot ideal for food storage, and it doesn’t run on electricity.
Best of all, getting your spuds ready for the root cellar is a simple task and won’t eat up your valuable time by forcing you to peel potatoes. Lay out the potatoes in a single layer on newspaper or in paper bags inside a cardboard box.
Store the box in a cool, dark spot to cure them and let their skins toughen. After a week or so, move the spuds to a deep box filled with sawdust or shredded paper. Potatoes stay healthy for four to nine months when stored in this manner.
Dry Your Potatoes for Long-Term Storage
Because they have high humidity, potatoes spoil in a hurry. The best way to prevent this undesirable outcome is to take water out of the equation and dry the potatoes. When you dehydrate spuds, they stay healthy and ready for reconstitution and use for up to a decade.
Blanch the potatoes in boiling water for five minutes, and then move them to an ice water bath. Arrange the blanched slices in a single layer in a dehydrating rack, and dry at 135° F for eight to ten hours, until the slices snap in two and are translucent. Store in an airtight container.
Pressure Can Your Tubers
Both white and sweet potatoes are excellent candidates for canning potatoes. Pressure canning keeps your vegetables preserved and ready for future use, and the process kills off potentially harmful contaminants.
If your home has little freezer space and no root cellar, it might be time to give canning a try and store your taters alongside the pickles.
Pressure canning potatoes takes a little time but it is worth the effort. Blanch the sliced potatoes in the pot of boiling water for three to five minutes.
Drain and rinse the potatoes, and then fill the jars with them. Add hot water, leaving about ½ inch headspace at the top of each jar.
Add a teaspoon of granulated salt to each jar. Seal the jars, put them in a pressure canner, and preserve according to manufacturer instructions. Let the jars of potatoes sit at room temperature for a day and label them. Move the jars to a dark shelf for long term storage.
We hope you had an exciting journey reviewing our potato preservation suggestions. Potatoes are a staple in our diets, but they go bad quickly if we don’t take steps to store them properly. Our guide shows you how to preserve potatoes and helps you find the best method of preserving potatoes for your needs.
Thanks for looking over our potato storage recommendations. Pinterest and Facebook are excellent places to share how to preserve potatoes, as you might wish to assist others in learning about potato preservation, too.