Red-skinned potatoes are perhaps the most desirable potato to can in North America.
The reason is that potatoes with red skins are a waxy potato, and as such, stay firm when canned, and can be used for nearly instant potato salads when opened and drained.
“Red-skinned” is a generic way in North America of identifying a waxy potato. (It’s just the skin that is red; the inside potato is white.) In other parts of the world, you may find them sold as “salad potatoes”, or, as named varieties such as Jersey Royals.
If you ever wonder how these people who are already busier than is ever possible still manage to produce potato salads for a crowd at a few hour’s notice, chances are they are doing it from home-canned potatoes.
The only difficulty is, red-skinned potatoes rarely seem to go on sale. So when they do, you need to leap fast, and leap high, and can a good size batch of them.
Red potatoes must be pressure canned using the USDA’s process for canning any potato; there is no other way to can them. But if you have a pressure canner, these are pure gold to have on hand, especially in the summer for last-minute potato salads.
If you do have salad use in mind, we would highly recommend adding a few pinches of salt or non-bitter, non-clouding salt sub to the jars. Otherwise, the potatoes can come out quite bland all the way to the core, which no amount of salad dressing coating the outside of the potato chunks can compensate for.
Follow this link for the procedure for canning potatoes including red potatoes.
Cooking with canning
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