Canning Potatoes ~ How to Pressure Can Potatoes at Home

Whether you’re canning chopped potatoes or canning whole potatoes, you’ll want to choose a variety that can withstand the heat in a pressure canner without falling apart.  Some varieties are bred to yield a starchy, light and fluffy baking potato, like russet.  Similarly, others are great for mashed potatoes and fall apart easily during boiling.  Avoid any variety of potato that falls apart during cooking and especially starchy varieties.
Choose firm-fleshed, waxy potatoes for canning.  According to the National Center for Food Preservation’s blog, 
“White potatoes for canning should be the “waxy” or “boiling” kind.  Different types of potatoes have different amounts and types of starches and they react to heating differently.  You want a potato that keeps its shape and texture well after a lot of heating, and not one that falls apart becomes “fluffy” after cooking, and is better for mashing. Most red-skin potatoes are of lower starch than baking potatoes and work well for canning. Many white round potatoes with thin skins fall into this category with red-skin potatoes too. Russets are not good for canning but are good for baking (they have a high starch content).  Yukon Gold may not be the best potatoes for canning.  While they seem good for boiling, they do tend to fall apart when overcooked.  From what we have read, there is a wide variety in the types and amounts of starches in blue potatoes, so not all blues are the same, just like not all white potatoes are the same in these characteristics.”
Beyond that, new potatoes harvested young and small tend to contain less starch than fully grown “adult” potatoes.  If you’re planning on canning up large amounts, start harvesting early and you’ll limit the starch content of the potatoes and improve their canning quality.
Think about any potatoes you’d use to make a good, firm potato salad and you’ll be all set.

Skipping the peeling step would save a lot of prep time before actually canning potatoes, but canning potatoes with the skin on is not recommended for several reasons…
Primarily, safety.  All the testing around canning times for potatoes was conducted using peeled potatoes.  Botulism spores actually live in the soil in contact with potato skins, so leaving the skin on the potato might make a difference in the total canning time.  According to the National Center for Home Food Preservation, potatoes should be peeled before canning because: 
“That style of preparation is how the research was carried out to determine the recommended processing, and in order to know that the peeling does or does not make a difference, research would need to be done with unpeeled potatoes. Different assumptions might be needed in assessing just how many spores of C. botulinum or other bacteria might be present at the start of the process and what amount of heat might be needed to meet standards for the risk of possible survivors. We do not know of research of canning potatoes with peels left on, so we recommend the preparation steps provided with the process recommendation, especially because there is a possibility that the deviation could result in a less safe situation.”
Reading that, it sounds like the NCFP is trying to cover all the bases, and is really being overly cautious here.  Realistically, the skins likely don’t make that much difference assuming they’re well-scrubbed.  Know that it’s just not a tested canning recipe, and you’ll have to use your own best judgment for your health here.
That said, beyond safety, peeling potatoes before canning is just a good idea.  Canning potatoes involves high heat in a pressure canner, and those skins are likely just going to fall off in the jar anyway and make a big mess.  When you’re dealing with homegrown potatoes, they’re also usually pretty dirt-covered and scrubbing off every last bit of schmutz would likely take just as long as peeling anyway.
So when you’re canning potatoes, you should be canning peeled potatoes!

Canning potatoes raw pack is actually not a tested canning method (sadly).  I love raw packing whenever possible, assuming it won’t impact quality (as it does when you’re canning peaches), but when canning potatoes all the tested recipes being with hot pack or cooking the potatoes first.
Potatoes are dense, and it can take a substantial amount of time to heat a potato through to the center in a pressure canner.  If you’re raw packing, it’s possible that you’re not holding the potatoes at a high enough temperature for a long enough time for safe canning.
Start by boiling the potatoes for 2 minutes for 1/2 inch to 1-inch cubes.  For whole new potatoes about 2” in diameter, the recommendation is to parboil them 10 minutes.  Pack the hot potatoes into canning jars, and cover with boiling water (don’t use the water you boiled the potatoes in for best quality, it’s full of starch).

Commercially canned potatoes in tin cans are rated for 3-5 years, but generally, the advice for home canners is to consume home-canned potatoes within 12 to 18 months.  Ball canning just introduced new canning lids that are guaranteed for 18 months, and that is the current recommendation when using the newer lids. 
Practically speaking, canned potatoes last much longer.  After about a year I’ve found that most pressure canned foods tend to lose quality, but slightly lower quality doesn’t mean it’s not safe to eat.  Assuming the seal is unbroken and the potatoes were properly pressure canned, they should last quite a long time.

Strictly speaking, salt isn’t required to safely can potatoes.  It’s perfectly fine to can potatoes without salt, but I don’t recommend it.  Potatoes taste best with salt, and the salt helps them maintain good texture during the canning process.  If you’d like to use less salt, go right ahead.  The general recommendation is 1 tsp per quart jar, but feel free to reduce it based on your tastes.