Earthy, sweet and better for you than normal potatoes, it’s hard to find negatives to sweet potatoes. If you eat a lot of them but don’t want to buy them every few days then here’s how you can freeze Sweet Potatoes.
Can You Freeze Sweet Potatoes?
Yes, you can freeze sweet potatoes for up to 12 months. To freeze sweet potatoes, prepare them as you usually would then blanch them for a minute before draining and drying. Once dry, portion into freezer bags and store in the freezer.
Do Sweet Potatoes Freeze Well? Yes
Can You Refreeze Sweet Potatoes? No
How To Freeze Sweet Potatoes
There are a few methods you can choose to freeze sweet potatoes so let’s start with freezing raw sweet potatoes for those times when you have excess potatoes and no need for them right now. So let’s get started:
- Clean: Freezing sweet potatoes raw does take a little work as they won’t hold their texture and taste if you don’t blanch them first so step one is to scrub and make sure your potatoes are free from dirt.
- Chop: Next, chop your potatoes into chunks about the size you want. You’ll want to consider how you usually use your sweet potatoes. If you tend to cook wedges, then cut them into wedges for example.
- Prepare for Blanching: Next, you need to prepare everything required to blanch the potatoes. So, you need to boil some water in a pan and prepare a bowl of ice water. You need to keep the ice water by the cooker as you will need to have it to hand.
- Blanch: When the water is boiling pop the potatoes into a metal colander and lower it into the boiling water. Let the potatoes boil for a couple of minutes and then take them back out again and immediately plunge the colander and potatoes into the ice water.
- Drain and Dry: Drain and allow the potatoes to dry. You can help them along by patting them with kitchen paper or a clean towel.
- Freeze: You can either flash freeze your potatoes to avoid them sticking together and then store in a large bag or you can freeze them immediately in portions in individual freezer bags. Place the bag(s) into the freezer.
3 Tips for Freezing Sweet Potatoes
Now you know how to freeze them, we’ve got our 3 top tips which we strongly recommend following when freezing sweet potatoes to have the best results:
Blanch Them
It may take a little extra time but make sure you blanch the sweet potato before freezing it. This will protect the texture and flavour when it freezes and is well worth the extra effort.
Consider Your Uses
Consider the way you normally eat sweet potatoes and freeze them in this form. If you eat it in soup then cut it into rough chunks. If you like to make wedges then freeze them as wedges.
Label
You’ll be surprised how difficult it can be to tell the difference between chunks of carrot, sweet potato and butternut squash when they’re frozen so make sure you write a clear label stating the contents.
How Long Can You Freeze Sweet Potatoes?
Sweet potatoes are one of those foods that keep super well in the freezer and you can keep your sweet potatoes frozen for up to twelve months, perfect for having some available whenever you need.
Yes, that’s a full year!
You could even bulk buy and freeze in advance so you have perfectly cooked sweet potatoes always available.
In a cool, dark cupboard, sweet potatoes will keep for around 3 weeks. When kept in the fridge, they will last for around 2 months!
How Do You Defrost Sweet Potatoes?
For best results, you want to defrost sweet potatoes slowly so just grab the bag out of the freezer, put it into a bowl and pop it in the fridge overnight or for several hours until they are completely defrosted.
If you need to defrost your potatoes a little quicker, then you can always use the microwave. Just take them out of the freezer bag and put them into a microwave-safe bowl.
Microwave them on a defrost setting until they are completely thawed.
Can You Refreeze Sweet Potatoes?
It isn’t recommended to refreeze any food once you have thawed it out and sweet potatoes are no different. The freezing and thawing process can cause food to deteriorate and bacteria to form so you want to avoid freezing more than once.
Having said that, if you have frozen your sweet potatoes raw and then made chips from them, for example, then you can refreeze them as chips.
Do Sweet Potatoes Freeze Well?
Sweet potatoes are one of those foods that do freeze fairly well. It does take a little preparation work beforehand as you can’t freeze raw potatoes that haven’t been blanched.
Doing so is likely to result in potatoes that don’t taste quite the same.
However, if you blanch or cook your potatoes before freezing there should be no problems and you won’t even notice a difference between fresh and frozen.
Related FAQs
If you’ve still got questions about freezing sweet potatoes or sweet potatoes in general, then these may help:
It is possible to freeze sweet potato mash but it won’t be as silky smooth as it was when made fresh. Once it has cooled down, spoon it into freezer bags, seal them up and then freeze.
Yes, you can! Freezing sweet potato chips or fries is a great way to have them ready to go without the prep. Make your fries as you normally would then blanch for 5 minutes in boiling water. Remove, drain and then leave to steam dry before bagging them up.
You can freeze all forms of cooked sweet potato whether it’s mash, roasted wedges, fries or even soup!
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