by Texas Homesteader ~
I dehydrated excess potatoes for longer-term pantry storage. It’s easy, but there’s a trick to keeping them from turning black as they’re dehydrated.
(Note: Some links in this post will take you to other related articles for further information. But links preceded with * are affiliate links. If you click and buy something I could receive a tiny commission.)
What To Do With Too Many Potatoes?
You can often find a huge bag of potatoes for cheap. It’s hard not to just buy the bigger bag instead of a smaller bag for almost the same money, right?? But will you be able to eat them all before they go bad?
In the past I have preserved potatoes by cooking, mashing and freezing them.
When I’m ready for mashed potatoes I just bring them out to thaw, drain the excess water, add salt/pepper/butter and BOOM! Homemade mashed potatoes.
Dehydrated Potatoes Take Less Storage Space
But I also like to dehydrate them. My dehydrated food is stored in repurposed glass jars in my pantry.
No additional energy is needed to store dehydrated veggies. And I love the benefits of having dehydrated food in my pantry.
I’ve dehydrated potatoes into Potato Cubes. They can be dropped still dehydrated right into our winter simmering soups to rehydrate as the soup cooks!
But this time I’ll shred the potatoes before dehydrating. I’ll use them for breakfast burritos or hash browns.
Variety, bebe!
Why Do Dehydrated Potatoes Turn Black?
Cutting raw potatoes and drying them will cause the potatoes to turn black. Ewwwwww… not very appetizing.
So before dehydrating potatoes I need to first cook them.
I washed the potatoes and then pricked the skin in several places on each potato. Then I stacked them tightly in my black enameled covered pan.
Cooking Potatoes With FREE Solar Energy
You can cook whole potatoes in a conventional oven or microwave.
You want the potatoes to be cooked enough to not turn black but undercooked enough that they’re firm enough to grate, maybe about 3/4 of the way.
But I wanted to use FREE solar energy to cook my potatoes in my *solar oven.
I removed the potatoes from the solar oven when I saw steam collecting on the inside glass of the oven. On this intermittently-cloudy day it took about 3 hours.
Grate Cold Potatoes For Hash Browns
Before you dehydrate your potatoes you’ll need to shred them. It’s easier to grate potatoes when they’re cold.
So I spread the hot cooked whole potatoes on my counter to cool, then refrigerated them overnight.
The next morning I pulled the cold potatoes out of the fridge and began to grate them.
Do You Need To Peel Potatoes For Hash Browns?
You can peel your cooked potatoes or leave the skins on if you like.
I didn’t peel my cold cooked potatoes before grating. Not only did it save time by skipping that step, but I don’t mind a few small flecks of potato skin mixed in with my grated potatoes.
I found for the most part the skins naturally pulled away from the potato as I grated anyway.
#WorkSmarterNotHarder
Dehydrating Potatoes Epic Fail – What NOT To Do!
I’m going to share with you what DIDN’T work in dehydrating my potatoes!
Since there was so much volume of grated potatoes I decided to dry them in my oven on low heat. I used baking trays lined with parchment paper.
Sounds easy enough, right?
But the oven allowed the moisture to remain and the potatoes didn’t dry fast enough. So they all soured.
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Epic fail! The whole mess had to go into the *tumbling composter. I had to start over from square one.
Maybe leaving the oven door ajar as it’s turned on low would allow moisture to escape? But it was still hot & humid outside. I just couldn’t stand to add that heat into our house.
Still, the lesson was learned. I needed to dry the potatoes more quickly and with better airflow.
Dehydrating Potatoes Quicker: Plan B
Dehydrator – I often dehydrate in my *Excalibur Dehydrator. When the weather’s hot I put the dehydrator on our covered porch and still keep the heat outside.
In The Sun – When there’s a heat wave going on here in Texas I take advantage of mother nature’s torture, I mean free heat. I can cover cooked, shredded potatoes with lightweight cheesecloth & place the trays outside on the picnic table to dry.
That hot Texas sun removes moisture quickly! I stir the grated potatoes a couple of times and they dry beautifully.
How To Store Dehydrated Food
I leave the lid off the jar and stir the contents for a couple of days to make sure the potatoes are fully dry. Then I seal them tightly with a lid & store them in the pantry.
Look at how 15 lbs of cooked and dehydrated potatoes shrink down into a very small volume!
How To Rehydrate Dehydrated Potatoes
When I’m ready to use my dehydrated potatoes I’ll rehydrate them first in very hot water until they’ve plumped back up.
Depending on the temperature of the water and how thin your potato pieces are, this can take from 10 to 30 minutes or more.
How To Use Dehydrated Shredded Potatoes
I’ll use dehydrated shredded potatoes in a couple of easy ways:
Homemade Hash browns. Rehydrate shredded potatoes for a few minutes, then drain the water completely. Heat oil in a skillet, add a pile of rehydrated grated potatoes, press lightly to flatten & cook each side until crisp.
Egg, Sausage & Potato Breakfast Burritos. I’ll use the same rehydrating procedure as with the hash browns, only after rehydrating & draining the potatoes I’ll add them directly to the eggs as I’m scrambling them.
Potatoes are fun to grow in your garden. Or oftentimes you can find super-large bags of potatoes dirt cheap.
Do you wonder what you’ll do with them all before they go bad? Question answered! Try dehydrating potatoes for longer storage.
~TxH~
This post categorized in 
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- Dehydrating Spinach To Enjoy All Year Long
- Using A Dehydrator To Preserve Fresh Onions
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25 Responses
Interesting, I didn’t know that about them turning black or that they could sour. I really need to get my dehydrator out and try using it more often. 😉
How long will these keep in jars?
I’ve just started dehydrating some produce myself (I bought a dehydrator for $5 bucks @ yardsale)
I didn’t get a book with it. So I catching information as I can and researching too. Hadn’t thought about potatoes!
The Texas Heat sounds perfect for this sort of thing.
Pat
Pat, this is my first round with dehydrating potatoes but I’ve read that your storage times vary greatly based on: How dry they are when you put them in the jars, whether or not you vacuum out the air (I didn’t, I’m using regular glass jars), etc. ~TxH~
Thanks!
I may give this a try if I catch potatoes on sale through the holidays.
I dried some of our elephant garlic (grows HUGE and WILD) from our property. I dried it and then ground it up in the CHINOIS …pretty easily. I’ve used it in several dishes so far and it is stout each time I open the container.
I must say– it gives me great pleasure to use garlic grown on our property, dried and crushed by me… I think my dehydrator paid for itself that day! 🙂
Pat
Excellent idea to dehydrate potatoes for later use !
I never would have thought of doing this but if you have a large harvest of potatoes this would be an awesome way to save them! Thanks for joining TTF!
I too thought it was helpful that you described with didn’t work. Amazing to me that you can dry food out in the sun. It’s so humid here that you cannot do it unless there is an unusual stretch of dry weather. I do love the idea of drying in general, though. Dried foods take up so much less storage space. Haven’t done potatoes, but we use our dehydrator to dry a lot of tomatoes, and sometimes apples and blueberries. Thanks for sharing on Creative Home and Garden hop.
I love this! I have been wondering if there was some way you could dehydrate your own potatoes. Not just my own homegrown, but I like to get mine in 50 pound bags, and sometimes I don’t get them all used up and wish I could dehydrate them. I will certainly have to try this. Thanks!
Wow I didn’t realize you could do this. Very good to know. Bummer that your first batch went bad, but genius idea using the hot sun! Great post.
That’s so awesome I did not know you could do potatoes how handy!
I’m interested to hear how it taste reconstituted. This would provide a lot of food that you could preserve.
Ben, we’ve used them reconstituted and mixed in our scrambled eggs when making breakfast burritos and also made into hash browns – always delicious. I’m anxious for cold weather soups when I can try the cubed dehydrated potatoes in stew. So far though it’s been a screaming success!
I tried to dehydrate raw potatoes and they turned black. How do you keep them from turning black.
Cook them first?????
Yes, in my post I mentioned that potatoes will turn black if they’re dehydrated while raw. I cooked the potatoes first and they turned out great.
Yes, you must cook the whole potatoes or blanch cut but uncooked slices or cubes prior to dehydrating or the will go black. Dip the sliced or cubed pieces in boiling water or about 2-3 minutes remove, allow to drain and pat dry and then dehydrate.
I love the idea of dehydrating hash browns. I recently discovered that I can quickly make hash browns by putting chunks of potatoes and water in my Vitamix and giving it a couple of quick pulses, then draining them. I wonder if I then toss them in some boiling water for a couple of minutes that would cook them enough before I dehydrate them.
The cooking process keeps the potatoes from turning dark as they’re being dehydrated. Since I was going to shred the cooked potatoes I experimented & cooked several batches of potatoes to different levels – I did notice the more I cooked them the lighter they were in color when they were fully dehydrated. Give it a try & see!
What a great idea, they should keep for ever unless water or pests get in. You could add some flavours and have home made instant soup!
I love potatoes in my breakfast burritos. Hubs is a real meat and potatoes kind of guy so we eat a lot of them. Thanks for sharing on #yuckstopshere! Please come share again next week!
I am glad you also said what didn’t work. I have dehydrated fruits and a few vegetables but never thought about potatoes. I didn’t know a solar oven even existed, lol. So much to learn. Thanks for linking up to Merry Monday!
Yeah Rachel, sometimes I have more than my fair share of epic fails. LOL Certainly don’t mind helping others steer clear of the same mistakes I’ve made.
Thanks for this great post, very interesting. I have never dehydrated potatoes. We are growing a heap here at the moment and I was thinking of canning mine, but might try drying some as well. If you have time I would love it if you would link up at Good Morning Mondays at Darling Downs Diaries. Blessings
Taylor thanks for sharing this. We usually use all our potatoes, but every once in a great while I’ll have a bag or two that sits and this is a great way to use them before they go bad. It’s cooling off in SoCal, so I might have to try it during the hot summer months.
I never thought about dehydrating potatoes. Do you just re-hydrate with water?? Thanks for sharing on the What’s for Dinner link up!
Yep, add a little boiling water and cover them up & let them rehydrate until they’re plump again. Then I like to either make them into hash browns or spoon them as-is into our breakfast burritos along with the egg & cheese. They take up so little space in my pantry this way too. ~TxH~