How to Dehydrate Potatoes
I always seem to blink and my garden has buckets and buckets of potatoes for me to deal with all at once. I’m not complaining because there are ten thousand and one things you can make with them. But this year I decided to try something different: dehydrating them.
The cool thing about dehydrating potatoes is you’ll have them on hand when you’re sitting around craving the most delicious Homemade Scalloped Potatoes, but you’re feeling too lazy to do all that peeling and chopping.
This will make your life way easier. You can also throw some in your winter soups.
How to Dehydrate Potatoes
Start by washing and peeling your potatoes. The number of potatoes you’ll use depends on how many trays you have on your dehydrator. My dehydrator can fit about 1-2 potatoes per tray.
First, I use a mandolin slicer to slice the potatoes about a 1/4 inch thick.
I then place the potato slices in an ice water bath and add a little lemon juice or fruit fresh to the water. This prevents browning while you bring water to a boil in a large stock pot.
After the water in your pot has reached a rolling boil, remove the potatoes from the ice water and place them in the pot of boiling water for about 4 minutes. With a slotted spoon, carefully remove the potatoes from boiling water and place them in a colander and run cold water over them. This will stop the cooking process.
Now you’re ready to dehydrate your potatoes!
Drain and then carefully place the potato slices on the dehydrator trays or shelves. Set dehydrator to 125 degrees and dry until crisp {I set mine and left it overnight for about 8-10 hours and they were done when we woke up}. Canning jars work great to store them in, but any airtight container would work.
For more dehydrating tips and canning recipes, head on over HERE.
~Mavis
Tammy W says
Then what do you use them in or how do you use the potatoes
Mavis Butterfield says
Scalloped potatoes and winter soups. 🙂
Susanne J Mogdans says
All you do is take them out of the jar, put them in a 9×13 pan, cover with your home made au gratin powder, add milk and bake at 400 for about 20 min. until browned nicely. You can find the au gratin or scalloped potato mix on pinterest. Very easy!
jen says
Hey love your site and love reading up on all your ideas! I just saw this one and wanted to ask…How do they taste? We just bought a food dehydrator and a pressure cooker (no idea how to use either yet LOL) and this looks like a easy-good idea…Please let me know, thanks in advance!
Jen
Mavis Butterfield says
Hi Jen, they taste just like regular potatoes when you make scalloped potatoes and add them to soups. 🙂
Susanne J Mogdans says
Like potatoes. Delicious
shelly says
I wonder if you could salt them and use them as snacks or are the too tough to chew
Mavis Butterfield says
Not unless you want your teeth to fall out. 😉
Jan says
Way too hard to chew, Think pasta, but harder.
PattyB says
I made scalloped potatoes from my dehydrated ones and thought that the cooking time and the amount of liquid was not adequate enough to fully hydrate the potatoes. The change I made was to simmer the potatoes in a pot of water until they are half way hydrated. Then I used them in my recipe.
Jan says
One of my splurges in the last year was an electric Kettle. Hot boiling water in about a minute and a half. Pour it over the potatoes to rehydrate while prepping the rest of the ingredients for the scalloped or au gratin potatoes.
Mandy P says
Once again Mavis, you save the day. We glean potatoes in the fall and always come home with 50 pounds or more. Drying them would help me store more over the winter.
We love to go gleaning. I go about twice in the fall and my young kids help me out. We spend about 90 minutes in a potato field with other Moms and their kids. The kids love to see who can find the biggest and smallest potatoes as well as interesting bugs. I know when we lived in CT people would go gleaning at orchards…that might be more what is available for you. Down here in southern Colorado, we have potatoes:)
Tammy says
Do they really need to be peeled? We usually eat them with the skin on.
Mavis Butterfield says
I don’t think so, we just like ours peeled. 🙂
kim says
Could you describe how you transfered the hot potatoes to the cooling ice water and then to the dehydrator trays? I dehydrated some potatoes last year and found this to be quite cumbersome. Perhaps there’s a better way….?
Carri says
I use a colander pot. One of the pots with holes in the bottom. I full one big pot with ice water. Set the potato slices in the one with holes and push it down into the ice water. You don’t want to put the ice in with the patios because it takes the boiling pot to long to get back to temp when you pull the colander pot from the ice water and boiling water. After they have blanched you just transfer back to the ice water pot.
Paula says
Have you stored any dried like this long-term? Did they darken? I’ve been going to the trouble to blanch mine, and if it’s not necessary I’d prefer to cut that step out.
Sakura says
I think you have to blanch them for a few minutes or they will brown when dehydrating. Also it makes it much easier to dehydrate and rehydrate for use in cooking. There is an awesome website on dehydrating that I found. It’s dehydrate2store. They have a whole bunch of information on dehydrating and using what you’ve made. I made some without blanching and they were nearly impossible to rehydrate.
Patty P says
I was just trying to figure out how to store all of my potatoes! I am totally going to try drying some…I don’t know why I didn’t think of that! Thanks for all of the great ideas!
Charla Echlin says
Great idea! I also have tons of potatoes as there were several volunteer plants this summer. I used to harvest all at once, but this year I am just keeping them stored in the ground and pulling them out as needed. Also- I was unable to harvest completely last year and found that many were just fine in the spring- they overwintered well. But my daughter gave me dehydrator last Christmas and I’m excited to use it! Thanks!
Sakura says
I love my dehydrator. I dehydrate a lot of what I grow. I love dehydrated potatoes, tomatoes, squash, swiss chard, we use all of it. It stores so easily. I just seal it in a mason jar or put an oxygen pack in with my mason jar and it will seal on its own.
Vicki says
What type of squash do you dehydrate??
Mary says
First – I love your site and the email updates. I cant wait to get home to see what new information you have and I wish I had found you sooner. And you seriously make me want more yard space to do more gardening.. the pallets. the raised beds.. the green house with gutters =D
I am very interested in doing some dehydrating myself. But, I was wondering if you could separate you Dehydrating posts into own category since you have some for canning, recipes and such? I did use the search..but just lazy and thought would be so cool to group together
thanks again
arlene wong says
which mandolin do you have that you can control the thickness. i have been looking for one like that for ages.
Bee Girl says
I’ve never dehydrated potatoes before and am very excited to try this out! That is, as long as we actually get a potato harvest big enough to justify the process this year 😉
Jack says
I just dehydrated some potatoes and the result was great. However I peeled and sliced them, but did not cook them in any way before drying them. I also dried them overnight in a conventional oven, on the lowest setting (50C), with the lid slightly open (put a towel between) to let the moisture out. This wasy I saved myself the trouble of doing extra work, AND getting another kitchen appliance that is essentially a low powered oven, right? I hope there’s not some necessary magic going on with the cooking part that I can’t be without, but the result is still really dry and crispy.
As an experiment I tossed in a whole, a half and a quarter of a potato to see how much they would dry upp. It turns out they dried up about 2 mm from each side, but the center was still moist, so I guess slices of no more than 4-5 mm would be the optimal balance between getting as much potato biomass in there as possible and having it dry out completely. I’m all scientific like that.
Mommasita4 says
My oven uses too much electricity to dehydrate in. I dehydrate constantly as I have a garden and don’t waste anything. I noticed a huge difference when I stopped using my oven and bought a dehydrator. Also, I can fit more into the dehydrator at one time than I could the oven.
Sharon says
If you are using dehydrated potatoes to start with how do you rehydrate them to use them in this recipe?
Mavis says
If you want to rehydrate potatoes first (many recipes don’t require that), just throw them in almost boiling water, cover, remove from heat and let sit for about 25-30 minutes. Drain and boom, potatoes are good as new!
Sharon says
I am sorry I should have clarified, if I wanted to make your scalloped potatoes would I need to rehydrate the potatoes first?
Thanks so much
Mavis says
Nope! I never do.
Emily says
The first time I dehydrated potatoes I didn’t realize they needed to be parboiled first or put in an acid to prevent browning. The result was something kind of gray-brownish. Rather than throw out food I used them in mushroom soup — they did look kind of like exotic dried mushrooms! It worked out fine, but now I am in the process of doing it “the right way.” From now on I am coming to your site before I try anything new in the kitchen! Thank you for such clear instructions!
Ted says
I’ve dehydrated potatoes using these instructions several times and have had great results. I generally make Au Gratin potatoes with my dried spuds. I buy cheese sauce powder from my local WinCo bulk section, if you don’t have a WinCo store, I’m sure you can look around on the internet or other stores to find some.
The only way to accurately measure my dried potatoes is by weight, I also measure my cheese sauce powder by weight.
Au Gratin Potatoes
Heat oven to 450°
90 Grams (3.2 ounces) dried potatoes
56 Grams (2 ounces) powdered cheese sauce
2 Cups boiling water
2 Tbl butter
1/2 Cup milk
In a 1 1/2 quart baking dish, Combine cheese sauce, boiling water, butter and milk.
Whisk together and add dried potatoes.
Bake about 25 minutes or until top is golden brown and potatoes are tender.
Sauce should thicken up when it cools a bit.
These turn out great and are always a favorite at my house.
Liv says
Could you use the dehydrated potatoes for mashed potatoes?
Susan says
I have a vitamix with a dry chopping bowl. Can I powder these for making mashed potatoes?
Gail says
Could you shred the potatoes and then dehydrate to make instant mashed potatoes
Barbara says
It is much easier to go ahead and cook the potatoes until you can mash them a bit. Then you can put that on a dehydrator tray with a mat or parchment , dehydrate them, then you can break it up with a blender, mixer, or whatever to make your own mashed potato flakes.
Patti Jo Bond says
I have a lot of small red potatoes and I want to dehydrate them for stews and soup but I can find how to do whole potatoes can you please help me.
Annie says
What an excellent idea! Thank you!