How To Dehydrate Potatoes
Dehydrate potatoes with this easy, step-by-step guide. Choose red, white, or Yukon gold, cut them any way you like, and turn your fresh harvest into shelf-stable, ready-to-use potatoes for cooking later.
Ingredients
- 2 lbs fresh potatoes
Instructions
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
How To Rehydrate Potatoes
To rehydrate, combine equal parts of potatoes and water, by volume and set aside to soak. The temperature of the water will dictate how long rehydration will take. Hot 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.
It is important to soak the potatoes for less than 2 hours. Soaking the potatoes for longer than 2 hours can restart microbial activity and cause spoilage.
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!
- 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.
