Dehydrating potatoes - success!

9 years ago

Round 1 was a couple months ago. Used big Russet baking potatoes from Sam's. Followed the book directions I saw in several places. Shredded first and boiled and made a royal mess with extremely starchy water and wasted lots of ice and water trying to cool them quickly. As the water got starchier, the potatoes were darker when they dried. I think there may have been 3 batches boiled one after the other. The darker potatoes don't taste bad, just look bad. PLUS, I was cutting the raw potatoes into spears so they'd fit through the tiny feed tube in the food processor. Continuous feed, not stop and start.

Round 2 was this week. Grocery store had 10 pound bags for $3 trying to get rid of them, so I bought 2. Someone here suggested baking them before instead of boiling after, so I did. 45 minutes at 350F per batch, 2 batches. This way they're not completely baked and still solid. I let them come to room temperature and ran some through the shredder. I had been reading and inspecting the food processor and found that the large plunger can be taken out and used with larger items, but you have to start and stop each time. That's fine. Still easier than cutting each tater. Room temp potatoes are downright gooey. And they stick together and make a lot of mashed potato consistency goop inside the processor. But I didn't need a ton of water except to rinse my hands in after loading a screen for the dehydrator. Used less than half the potatoes to fill the box. Refrigerated the rest.

Round 3 was today. After Round 2, I was not looking forward to the gooey mess. However, I found that refrigerated potatoes shred MUCH better than room temp potatoes. Less goo, none, really. Very little mashed consistency. Most are clean shreds. They separated easily and spread easily on the screens and I think I put more in this batch because I could more easily fill each screen to the edges. They're running now, but I do believe this is the way to do them. Sooo much easier and cleaner!

Trial and error wins again. Will find out in the morning how they do. But I'm pretty sure they will be fine.

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Comments (6)

bcskye
9 years ago
Thanks for sharing what you've done and the results. Looking forward to your report tomorrow.

Madonna
digdirt2
9 years ago
Glad to hear it worked well for you. I have had some mixed results - blackening vs. no blackening - but not sure what causes the difference.

Definitely agree that a good dose of time in the fridge makes a big difference.

Dave
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annie1992
9 years ago
I'll also be watching for those results, but it sounds like you found the "sweet spot" there. I have potatoes in the freezer, and I need to use those up, maybe I'll dehydrate next year.

Annie
thatcompostguy
Original Author
9 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
They worked fine. I ran at 125F for 8 hours in an Excalibur. Spot checking the next morning (yesterday) found a very few that were still pliable where they were lumped together. I ran it another 3 hours or so. Today, I emptied the trays. Both batches were very nice bright golden yellow, not quite as pretty as the original box I bought that gave me the idea to try to make my own. But they don't use the peels and I did. I like the peels. Well, I don't dislike them. Easier to leave them on and you retain all those nutrients. They're in 2 big ol' pretzel jars now waiting to be used. :-)

Very happy with the results. For my $6 worth of potatoes, minus about 6 I kept out, plus electricity to bake, shred and dehydrate, I ended up with at least 4 times as many as the $6 worth of already dehydrated shreds I got originally. I didn't weigh them, but eyeballing them looks like 4 times as much.

As for the frozen taters, I actually saw an "instructional" video online somewhere they were showing how to dehydrate shredded potatoes. They were starting with frozen shredded potatoes they bought. I don't think they even thawed them out. Just loaded the dehydrator. That was just weird to me to buy big bags of frozen potatoes to dehydrate when you get them home. Just buy them already dehydrated if you're not buying fresh raw potatoes. But if you grow your own and freeze them, then dehydrating those might not be so weird.
naturegirl_2007 5B SW Michigan
9 years ago
I don't know why the video people used frozen potatoes but I do know a few backpackers who dehydrate a lot. Some of them will dehydrate purchased produce to use in making meals to take backpacking. It gives them the chance to make different meals than those already commercially available and with only the ingredients they want. Using already prepped frozen foods makes this less time consuming which can be a big plus to some of them. Compared to the cost of some backpacking meals, the added cost of using a prepared frozen item would probably not matter much.
bcskye
9 years ago
Glad you posted your final results. I will be doing some myself and this helps. Thank you!

Madonna