Canned French Fry Taste Test

It was on Facebook in one of the canning groups that someone mentioned they had canned about 80 jars of French fries and I wondered what they would be like. When I grow potatoes, I can keep them for about six months but if we have a good crop, that can be a lot of potatoes to consume. I had already canned a lot of potatoes that I bought from Azure Standard but the thought of French fries in jars intrigued me. I wasn’t about to do a ton of them until I knew we would like them. This experiment had the potential to be a real bummer. I can remember not always liking the potatoes my grandma canned but back then, her favorite way to cook them was in with fresh green beans. At our house, we mostly ate storebought canned green beans and the home canned green beans were different and I didn’t like them. Of course, now I’d much rather have home grown and home canned green beans.

Friday I peeled and cut enough potatoes to fill five pint jars, which is a full load for the electric canner. After canning them, I left them overnight to “age” and then I wanted to cook a pint of them and see what we thought before I did more.

A pint of canned fries is really not quite enough for both of us to get our fill of potatoes – even if we were eating them with a burger or a sandwich; but a quart means (1) we have to eat twice as many and (2) we’re eating more than we really want just because they won’t keep well after the jar is opened.

That’s really what you get when the two of us split a pint of fries except I had already eaten one of the fried potatoes before I remembered to take a photo! Vince did get a few more than I got but when you consider it’s either that or twice as many from a quart, I guess we’re good with a pint. I could put them in 1-1/2 pints, which would probably be perfect, but that size jar is hard to find these days and rather expensive. I have some so as I empty them, I’ll set them aside to be used for canning French fries.

The lady who made the post on Facebook said she used Russet potatoes and there were none of those to be found around here. I did find “Idaho Potatoes” which appear to be russets but they were small and not so great for cutting into French fries but we use what we can find these days.

The potatoes smelled kinda musty when I was cutting them and even after I drained them after canning, they smelled musty. This was the storebought potatoes and who knows the history on those.

I drained them and rinsed them, then spread them out on a towel to dry. They weren’t mushy and they weren’t terribly fragile but you could tell they were somewhat cooked. I fried some in oil and air fried some. The ones in the oil were not great. If that had been our only option, I wouldn’t have canned any more of them. The ones cooked in the air fryer were amazing! The inside was almost like a good mashed potato and the outside was crispy. They were so good! I could seriously eat them every day. Vince liked them too. Yesterday he said “Are we having more potatoes today?” I told him we can have them once a week once I get 52 pints canned! I’ll probably cut some of them into squares and air fry them for breakfast one day this week.

I was able to get about 10 pints of fries from one five pound bag of potatoes. Saturday I canned 15 more pints using some of the potatoes I had grown. I see myself canning lots of potatoes over the next few weeks.

For canning potatoes, National Center for Home Food Preservation’s instructions can be found here.