How To Dehydrate Potatoes
Dehydrated potatoes are one of the easiest, most useful pantry staples you can make at home. With just a few minutes of prep, you can turn fresh potatoes into long-lasting cubes and slices that rehydrate beautifully for quick, homemade meals. If you're looking for a simple, reliable way to preserve your harvest, this step-by-step guide shows you exactly how.
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What it is: Shelf-stable dehydrated potatoes that rehydrate beautifully for use in soups, stews, casseroles, and more.
Why you’ll love it: Preserve your potato harvest for months at room temperature, and have ready-to-use potatoes on hand anytime!
How to make it: Peel and slice or dice fresh potatoes, steam blanch for 5-6 minutes, plunge into an ice bath, then dehydrate at 125°F for 8-12 hours until crisp and brittle.
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Dehydrating potatoes is something that’s relatively new to me, although I have been dehydrating all sorts of things for over 10 years. Like. ALL SORTS. Garlic, celery, onions, strawberries, marshmallows, citrus, you name it, it’s been in my dehydrator, and I probably wrote a dehydrating recipe for it!
This year, though, I was staring down a potato harvest, and not enough room to store it all, I was in a pickle. Or a potato, if you will. So I broke out my trusty dehydrator and started testing. Turns out it’s a lot like dehydrating carrots!
This guide to dehydrating potatoes is dedicated to testing.
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Why Dehydrate Potatoes
Dehydrating potatoes may seem like an unusual task, but it can actually be quite useful!
Dehydrated potatoes have many advantages over their fresh counterparts: they are lightweight, easy to store, and require no special storage conditions. One of our limiting factors is that we lack cold storage, so storing fresh potatoes long-term is a challenge. We’ve overcome that by dehydrating!
By removing moisture from the potatoes, we create a shelf-stable product that can last for months or years. Dried potatoes are a fantastic pantry ingredient to have on hand, as they can be reconstituted and used in many different recipes, from soups and stews to casseroles and more.
Dehydrating also has some other benefits, it helps to maximize your potato harvest and prevents food waste with less work than pressure-canned potatoes. Oh… and you can save a little space while you’re at it – dehydrated potatoes shrink by more than 50%!
Key Ingredients
Potatoes: Always choose fresh, firm, unblemished potatoes when dehydrating. Avoid potatoes that are sprouting, soft, squishy, or smelly. You do not need to peel the potatoes, but I always do as dehydrating can concentrate the earthiness of the skin and that can be a bit unappetizing.
I personally prefer to use a waxy potato, like Yukon Gold, when dehydrating vs a starchy potato, like russet potatoes. I find Yukon Golds hold their shape better after blanching and subsequent rehydrating than starchy potatoes which can tend to lose their shape and even disintegrate.
How To Dehydrate Potatoes
Prepare The Potatoes:
- Step 1: Place a steam basket inside a large heavy-bottomed pot. Fill with fresh water until just below the steam basket. Cover and set over medium heat to come to a boil. Fill a large bowl with cold water, and set aside for now.
- Step 2: Meanwhile, working in batches, peel potatoes, and slice or dice as desired. If slicing, aim for about 1/4 inch thick slices, and if dicing, try for around 1/2 inch cubes. Use a sharp knife, mandoline, food processor, or chopper to ensure consistency in sizing.
- Step 3: Place the cut potatoes into the cold water as they are done cutting. Avoiding air exposure can help reduce black spots.
- Step 4: Use a slotted or spider spoon to scoop potatoes from the water bath into the steamer basket. Avoid overfilling the basket. It’s better to work in batches to ensure each piece gets steamed appropriately to help avoid black oxidization spots.
- Step 5: Cover pot with tightly fitting lid and steam blanch each batch for 5-6 minutes over high heat. Meanwhile, set up an ice bath.
- Step 6: Immediately remove blanched potatoes from the heat and plunge them into an ice bath to cool.
Dehydrate The Potatoes:
- Step 7: Once the potatoes have cooled, remove them from the ice bath and spread them in a single layer on the racks of your dehydrator.
- Step 8: Dehydrate at 125f for 8-12 hours, or longer, depending on the thickness of the pieces in the dehydrator, potato type – waxy potatoes hold more moisture than starchy potatoes, and the humidity where you are dehydrating.
- Step 9: Check the potatoes for doneness around 8 hours. Pull one piece, let it cool for a minute (hot potatoes feel deceptively pliable), then test. Potatoes are completely dried when they are crisp and brittle. Ensure they are completely dried before removing them from the dehydrator.
- Step 10: Cool dehydrated potatoes on dehydrator racks to room temperature for 30-45 minutes before transferring to storage containers.
For the first 7 days of storage it’s important to observe and condition the potatoes.
Conditioning Dehydrated Potatoes
Conditioning is the food preservation world’s best-kept secret. Here’s why it’s critical for dehydrated potatoes: Even when potatoes feel dry, inner moisture can remain. If you seal them immediately, that trapped moisture redistributes and can cause mold.
Once the dry potatoes are in their storage container, you simply shake them each day or so for a week and observe the container for signs of moisture.
- If there are no signs of moisture, you’re good to go, place them in a cool dark place for long-term storage!
- If there is evidence of moisture in the container, you must add the potatoes back to the dehydrator and dry them longer. After they’ve been dried the second time, you’ll need to go through the conditioning process again.
Expert Tips
- Pick fresh, vibrant foods. The most important reason for this is that the fresher the food that goes into the dehydrator, the fresher the flavor and texture when reconstituted.
- Aim for consistency in your slice or dice. The more consistently sized the pieces you are dehydrating, the more consistent the drying time, the final result, and the reconstituted product. The faster all pieces are dried, the better as longer drying times can lead to reduced flavor in the dried food.
- Properly dried foods refresh well, so it’s important to take the time to get it right. This means picking the right type of potatoes, preparing them properly, drying them properly, and storing your dried potatoes the right way!
- 10lbs = half gallon. I processed 10lbs of potatoes when photographing this guide, that yielded me a half gallon of dehydrated diced potatoes. Sliced take up a lot more room.
Rehydrating Dried Potatoes
Although dried potatoes can go directly into your favorite recipes without needing to be reconstituted first, I highly recommended that you take the extra time to rehydrate them in water before baking or cooking. Doing so will help bring back more of the original texture and flavor.
To rehydrate, combine equal parts of potatoes and water, by volume and set aside to soak. (ex. 1 cup potatoes and 1 cup water)
The temperature of the water will dictate how long rehydration will take. Hot or boiling water will rehydrate more quickly than cool water. Dried potatoes are considered reconstituted when they are nearly the same size as they were when freshly cut.
Note: Soak the potatoes for less than 2 hours. Soaking the potatoes for longer than 2 hours can restart microbial activity and cause spoilage.
Converting Dehydrated To Fresh
There is no rule of thumb when it comes to converting dried potatoes like other vegetables (ahem, dried onions).
Here’s what I do to overcome that: I designate the top tray in my dehydrator to be the measuring tray for every single batch I do.
I fill the top tray with exactly 4 cups of whatever I happen to be dehydrating (or less if that’s all that will fit). At the end of the process, I can easily measure the dehydrated volume to determine what the conversion from fresh to dried is.
For my diced potatoes, it’s a generous 1/3 cup dried = 1 cup fresh.
Using Dried Potatoes
I first started dabbling in dried potatoes to alleviate storage concerns and garden harvest crunches, but I have really fallen in love with them for soups and stews.
Each fall, my mom, sister, and I get together and we make dehydrated soup mixes from our bountiful garden produce. Having a healthy, homemade, homegrown, dehydrated soup in a jar for easy dinners is such an amazing gift over the long winter. Most of my dried potatoes will be used in soup mixes.
Dehydrated potato cubes and slices can also be used:
- as hash browns
- in casseroles
- pan fried
- for scalloped potatoes
- as mashed potatoes
Batch + Storage
Batch:
This recipe requires only potatoes, water, and available space on your dehydrator tray (s)! You are limited by only those constraints, so it can be halved or doubled infinitely as long as you have space.
Only prepare the potatoes that you have space for in the dehydrator right now, as potatoes begin to degrade as soon as they are cut and turn brown easily when exposed to air.
For reference, I peeled, diced, and dehydrated 10 pounds of potatoes for the photos I took for this guide. I ended up with a half-gallon jar filled with diced dehydrated potatoes. Sliced potatoes would take up quite a bit more room as they don’t pack quite so nicely.
Storage:
Use any clean, dry airtight container. My favorites are mason jars for dehydrated food storage, mostly because I cannot walk by a mason jar and not buy it. HA!
If you’ve got a massive load of potatoes, vacuum-sealing the dried potatoes works fantastic! I recommend using a chamber vacuum sealer and the thickest bags you can get your hands on, as the dried product can be poky and you’d not want them to puncture your bags.
Small containers tend to be best for dehydrated taters. Because we are only using a small amount at a time, we’re going to be in and out of the container a lot. Each time the container is opened, air and moisture are able to get into the container and deteriorate your dehydrated food over time.
Dehydrated Potatoes FAQs
Don’t waste the energy and time to dehydrate raw potatoes – blanching or parcooking is absolutely necessary. I tested this once just to see what would happen, and within a few hours those beautiful potato slices turned an unappealing gray-black. By the time they were fully dried, they looked terrible.
Blanching is non-negotiable because it stops oxidation (without it, enzymes cause potatoes to turn black over the 8-12 hour drying process), improves rehydration (unblanched potatoes stay hard and gritty even after soaking, with an odd raw starchy flavor), and ensures food safety by reducing surface bacteria and deactivating enzymes that cause spoilage during storage.
Those 5-6 minutes of blanching make the difference between dehydrated potatoes you’ll actually use and ones you’ll throw away. It’s worth the extra step.
If your dehydrated potatoes turned black, the culprit is almost always inadequate blanching. The three most common causes are: you didn’t blanch at all, you didn’t blanch long enough, or cut potatoes sat exposed to air too long.
Can you still use them? Technically yes if properly dried, but the flavor is off, texture is poor, and they look terrible. I’d rather start fresh with a properly blanched batch. To prevent this, keep cut potatoes in cold water until blanching, bring water to a full rolling boil before adding potatoes, blanch for the full 5-6 minutes using a timer, and plunge immediately into ice water.
Potatoes typically take 8-12 hours at 125°F to fully dehydrate, but timing varies based on several factors. Slice thickness matters – 1/4″ slices dry in 6-7 hours while 1/2″ cubes take 7-8 hours. Potato variety also plays a role, as well as your dehydrator load – fully loaded dehydrators take longer than partial loads. Add 1-3 hours on humid days, and keep in mind that dehydrator efficiency varies, especially with models without fans or temperature control.
Whenever possible, I prefer to steam blanch my produce vs boiling water blanch. Steam blanching is more energy efficient and time efficient, it tends to preserve color and flavor better, and may preserve more nutrients that would otherwise be leached out into the water and lost.
You don't need a fancy steamer to steam blanch, all you need is a pot with a snug fitting lid and steaming basket.
The hardest thing when steam blanching is making sure you don't run out of water in the bottom of the pot if you're running multiple batches!
See What Else I’m Dehydrating
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📖 Printable Recipe
How To Dehydrate Potatoes
Ingredients
- 2 lbs fresh potatoes
Instructions Start Cooking
Prepare The Potatoes:
- Place a steam basket inside a large heavy-bottomed pot. Fill with fresh water until just below the steam basket. Cover and set over medium heat to come to a boil. Fill a large bowl with cold water, and set aside for now.
- Meanwhile, working in batches, peel potatoes, and slice or dice as desired. If slicing, aim for about 1/4 inch thick slices, and if dicing, try for around 1/2 inch cubes. Use a mandoline or chopper to ensure consistency in sizing.
- Place the cut potatoes into the cold water as they are done cutting. Avoiding air exposure can help reduce black spots.
Steam Blanch:
- Use a slotted or spider spoon to scoop potatoes from the water bath into the steamer basket. Avoid overfilling the basket. It's better to work in batches to ensure each piece gets steamed appropriately to help avoid black oxidization spots.
- Steam blanch each batch for 5-6 minutes. Meanwhile, set up an ice bath.
- Immediately remove blanched potatoes from the heat and plunge them into an ice bath to cool.
Dehydrate:
- Once the potatoes have cooled, remove them from the ice bath and spread them in a single layer on the racks of your dehydrator.
- Dehydrate at 125f for 8-12 hours, or longer, depending on the thickness of the pieces in the dehydrator and potato type – waxy potatoes hold more moisture than starchy potatoes.
- Potatoes are completely dried when they are crisp and brittle. Ensure they are completely dried before removing them from the dehydrator.
Store:
- Cool the potatoes at room temperature for 30-45 minutes before transferring to a clean airtight container for storage.
- For the first 7 days of storage, observe and condition the potatoes.
Condition The Potatoes:
- Once the dry potatoes are in their storage container, shake them each day or so for a week and observe the container for signs of moisture.– If there are no signs of moisture, you're good to go, place them in a cool dark place for long-term storage!– If there is evidence of moisture in the container, you must add the potatoes back to the dehydrator and dry them longer. After they've been dried the second time, you'll need to go through the conditioning process again.
Notes
- Pick fresh, vibrant foods. The most important reason for this is that the fresher the food that goes into the dehydrator, the fresher the flavor and texture when reconstituted.
- Aim for consistency in your slice or dice. The more consistently sized the pieces you are dehydrating, the more consistent the drying time, the final result, and the reconstituted product. The faster all pieces are dried, the better as longer drying times can lead to reduced flavor in the dried food.
- Properly dried foods refresh well, so it’s important to take the time to get it right. This means picking the right type of potatoes, preparing them properly, drying them properly, and storing your dried potatoes the right way!
- 10 pounds of potatoes = half-gallon jar of diced dehydrated potatoes. Sliced potatoes would take up quite a bit more room as they don’t pack quite so nicely.
Is it possible to use an oven for dehydrating potatoes?
It is possible if your oven gets to a low enough temperature, but I have not tried it so I can’t vouch for the effectiveness! Sorry!
Question. What if I don’t have a steam basket? How would I boil the potatoes?? This is all so new to me.
You can try blanching them in boiling water! I’d do 5 or so minutes! Both steam blanching and water bath blanching do the same thing, I just prefer to use steam, I find it saves on time and water.
Thank you so much for this! I have 75# of potatoes left from winter that I need to process and decided that dehydrating them made the most sense. DO you have a preferred cut that you would use for Russets? I did see that you preferred Yukons.
Hey Angela, sorry for the delay – been embroiled in site redesign this week! You can prepare the russets the same way, no worries there, just watch them when you’re rehydrating, the high starch content can make them dissolve a bit.
Having been gifted about 30 lbs of potatoes, I was looking for the best way to dehydrate some. So glad I came across your site!
That’s awesome, Tina! I love dehydrating 🙂
five star helpful
Thanks for posting this recipe. I learned the best way for dehydrating potatoes. I have exhausted all my ideas and this was perfect. Thank you
Happy to hear you found it useful, Sandra!