The Glorious Sweet Potato~Easy Canning

As a child I loved it when my mom or grandmother would serve candied sweet potatoes.  They were baked in the oven and covered in marshmallows.  Yum! Now as an adult (and mom) I appreciate these orange beauties for what they really are: a nutritional powerhouse.

Sweet potatoes are a wonderful source of the B vitamins, iron, manganese, potassium, Vitamin A, Vitamin C and iron. They also are full of antioxidants and cancer-fighting agents and their low glycemic index make them a healthy choice for diabetics. Because of their anti-inflammatory properties, I love them because they help me when having a really bad fibromyalgia day.

We grew sweet potatoes for the first time this year and I am happy at our harvest.  Wanting to preserve them for as long as possible, I decided to can most of them.  I got these canning instructions from PickYourOwn.org, and I recommend you head over there for lots more tips and info.

Here are some of our sweet potatoes. The plants were purchased at a local farm supply store, so I don't know their "beginnings", but they were grown and harvested completely organically. I must say, I was surprised at how much bigger they were than those I've bought at the grocery. Some of them were HUGE!

Canning Instructions:

*Wash potatoes and cut off any "tails" (some are pictured above).
*Fill a large pot with water, bring to a boil.
*Cut the potatoes (skins on) to a manageable size for your pot. Mine were too big to put in whole, so I cut them into chunks.
*Cook the potatoes in the boiling water for around 20 minutes, or until slightly tender.
*Get your pressure canner ready while potatoes are cooking. Fill the canner with about 4-6 inches of water and get it heating up (lid off) so it will be ready to use.
* Drain and peel.
*Cut into smaller chunks, to fit nicely into your jars.
*Prepare your syrup.  After filling your jars, you will need to "top them off" with a sugar syrup. PickYourOwn.org (link above) has some wonderful recipes. I used 8 cups of hot water and 4 cups of sugar, in a sauce pan, heat and stir until dissolved. Keep hot. You may want to prepare this while your potatoes are cooking or cooling just enough to make them easy to handle while peeling.
*Fill your jars. The above syrup recipe was enough for 6 quart jars.
*Add syrup to jars (to fill line, or right below where the canning ring sits)
*Add lids and rings.
*Add jars to pressure canner; can at 10 pounds pressure for 90 minutes. I have the kind of canner with a weighted gauge; PickYourOwn.org has instructions for the dial gauged-kind.

There you go!  Glorious sweet potatoes to fill your pantry.  I like to bake them in the oven with butter and a little bit of brown sugar. How do you serve your sweet potatoes?