# sweet potatos



## Big Dave (Feb 5, 2006)

How do you preserve your sweet potatoes after you harvest them? we have more than we know what to do with. Please help me out here.


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## karenp (Jun 7, 2013)

Let them cure out in the sun for a few days (I lay mine out on an old sheet) then put them in a "root cellar", we use the crawl space under the house. Ours last most of the winter that way


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## Tirzah (May 19, 2006)

I bake, skin and mash them and freeze into containers when cooled. (I have a couple of recipes that use them so I freeze pre-measured)
I also make sweet potato fries and freeze them.


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## redneckswife (May 2, 2013)

So yesterday, my dear elderly father is checking on his bee hives at the sweet potato farmers fields and he comes home with umpteen hundered lbs.(lol). They barter, dad places bees in his field in exchange for sweet potatoes come harvest time.

Yesterday & today are/were devoted to preserving sweet potatoes.

Here's a link with some freezing instructions and reciepes.

http://www.pickyourown.org/freezing_sweetpotato.htm

We love sweet potato pie around here, so I'm cooking and blending my pie filling today and putting in a Ziploc baggie pushing down each baggie into a pie plate and freezing.
When their froze, i'll remove the pie plate and stack the "pie-molds" in the deep freeze ready to just pop into a pie shell.


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## 1shotwade (Jul 9, 2013)

We don't do any "curing",just dig,place in 5 gal buckets and store on the enclosed porch with a towel over the bucket to block light and allow them to get air. The next year at harvest we take any that's not been used(and they do stay good that long) and can them like anything else.BTW that's a great thing to do with reg. potatoes also.It makes making potatoe salad a 5 min. job!


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

I had some sweet potato chips last week. They were very good. Probably wouldn't keep a long time though. Deep fried and salted.


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## danielsumner (Jul 18, 2009)

Bake them in big pans in the oven. When cool I easily peel the skin off. About 4 whole ones fit in a quart freezer bag. I also cut some into chunks. It's easy to thaw them in the microwave, a little butter and its delish.


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## Marilyn (Aug 2, 2006)

I let them cure for several hours on the ground after digging. By that night, they are ready for boxing up to be heat cured, preferrably some place at 85 or 90 degrees (I use the hatch-type trunk, park in the sun). This seems to sweeten them and make them hardier. After 10 or 15 days in the heat, store them in well ventilated crates or baskets in the coolest room of the house, which happens to be my laundry room. They last all through the winter, or as long as they _*last*_. We consume sweet potatoes quite often:happy:.

My old Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening book states that storage at temps of less than 50 degrees could promote spoilage.


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## mpennington (Dec 15, 2012)

I dehydrate mine in slices and cubes. Also bake, smash, roll out on fruit leather sheet then powder. My son's favorite pie is sweet potato. I use 1/2 cup powder, rehydrated with 2 cups boiling water.


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## xix (Dec 22, 2006)

We have a crop that needs to come out (our first) and dh was reading that we need about 4 weeks curing at 80-90degrees and plenty of humidity. Not really sure how he plans to make that happen but that is the plan. But taking comfort that plenty of people seem to just make do with them right out the ground too - if it needs to come to that.


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