Mary's Dehydrated Potatoes from Scratch

Mary is a family friend who is a wealth of knowledge.

She is our go-to gal for anything canning and preserving.

She sent me the following email,

and I thought it was so impressive

I asked her if I could share it here.

She kindly said, "Yes."

My Experiment with dehydrating potato’s from scratch.

 I started out boiling potatoes in a 2 qt. kettle.  I cooked them until they were soft and mushy. Then mashed them using an electric mixer. I did not drain them but used the boiling water to mash them. I whipped them until they were nice and fluffy. Then spread them on the dryer sheets. I used 3 different types. One was the sheet that came with the dehydrator for making fruit roll-ups. One was a tray covered with parchment paper and the last was a plastic canvas like sheet that was made for the dehydrator.   I made 2 different batches and the first batch I spread thin and the second I spread about ¼ inch thick.

      

Plastic canvas                        parchment paper                         plastic roll-up tray

    

The first batch, the one I spread thin I dried at a temp of 140 degrees and it took 9 hours to dry.

The second batch that was around ¼ inch thick took 20 hours to dry at 140 degrees. The first batch had a slight brownish look but the second was much darker.

     Half way through I turned them over to finish drying on the back side.

   

I then broke these up. The thicker ones were harder to break than the thinner ones. Then I put them into my blender. It is an old one so it took some time for it to make this into a powder some of the harder pieces were more like pearls. I think maybe a food processor would have worked better.

 End product.  This is about 8 med. Potatoes.  To use I brought a little more than 2/3 cup of water and 1 tablespoon butter to a boil. Turned off the heat, added ¼ cup milk and stirred in 2/3 cup of potatoes.  Add more butter and milk if needed.  They turned out a little darker than fresh potatoes but the taste was good.

I asked which drying sheet was preferred and thick or thin method.

I prefer the thin layer. It took less time and also blended up better and was lighter in color.  Parchment and rollup dried about the same and was easy to get off, but the plastic canvas dried faster and was a little harder to get off. I used a table knife to scrape it off but liked the way it dried. 

Thank you Mary.

Until next time,

Nimble Fingers and Even Stitches