The $12 Potato Lesson

I've been canning potatoes for years and never have any problems.  I have canned both red ones and white ones.  Canned potatoes are a good convenience for me in the pantry, as they cook up quickly for breakfast potatoes, and you can shred them up easily for hash browns.   So, last week I bought 10 pounds of beautiful looking white potatoes at the farm market from another vendor.   They were firm, and sized right.  I thought:  Ooh!  These will be great for canned potatoes!  WRONG!!  Apparently they were of a dry, baking variety.  I usually can up waxy-type varieties of potatoes, like Red Nordlands or White Kennebecs.  Not sure what these were, but they were obviously for baking or making mashed potatoes, or frying - but NOT canning!  They had a lot of starch in them, and when they came out of the canner, the potatoes became a gelatinous mush!  See the photo below, showing a jar of red potatoes canned, and a couple jars of the wrong kind to can!

A little research on the internet told me that only waxy type potatoes will be successful for canning, as they have a lower starch content and hold up well during the canning process.   I guess the potatoes I bought were the kind for baking, and were of a dry type, and during the heat of the canning process, the starch in the potato mixes with the salted water and become a gelatinous mixture.   They also soaked up every drop of water in the jar and were completely inedible.
So - all you ladies out there who like to do canning - don't buy anything other than red potatoes for canning!    I wasted $6 for potatoes, $3 for lids and at least $3 worth of electricity to learn this lesson.   Too bad, too, because those potatoes I bought would probably have made some lovely mashed potatoes.  Live and learn, ya know?