Dehydrated Potatoes For Instant Mashed

I grew up in meat and potato country, where potatoes were the standard starch for most meals: baked, mashed, boiled, scalloped, hashed, french fried, you name it, we ate potatoes that way. Now, I rotate the starches I serve—rice, pasta, potatoes, bread or rolls—but our favorite is always potatoes. Especially, mashed. With salt and butter. Or gravy.  Or my mock sour cream (ricotta with a little kefir stirred in until it’s sour cream consistency). Yum. 

There are a lot of steps to making mashed potatoes, however, so I don’t make them very often. There’s store-bought instant, but somehow I don’t think those taste very good. They supposedly use freeze drying to make it (which is said to be superior for retaining flavor and nutritional value), so maybe it’s the other stuff they put in it: vegetable oil (soybean, cottonseed, sunflower or canola), corn syrup solids, maltodextrin, sodium caseinate, disodium phosphate, mono and diglycerides, calcium stearoyl lactylate, artificial flavors, artificial color, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bisulfite, dipotassium phosphate, silicon dioxide, etc. Or maybe because I’m so used to eating real food, that store bought instant mashed potatoes just taste “off.”

When I discovered several mashed potatoes dehydrating videos, I was interested! They were pretty easy to make.

As you can see, I didn’t peel my potatoes, even when I’m mashing them. It adds nutrition, and neither of us minds the bits of peel. We’re used to it.

I’ve tried both waxed paper and parchment paper for drying things like this. I don’t find either works very well, so I’m thinking I need to invest in some fruit leather tray liners or maybe silicone baking sheets.

Store in a sealed, airtight jar (I vacuum pack mine).

I haven’t tried making mashed potatoes with them yet, but I’ll report back when I do. I’m going to follow the rehydrating recipe from Northstar Prepsteader.     

2/3 C water

1 T butter

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 C milk

2/3 C potato flakes

If these are as good as everybody says they are, we’ll eat a lot more mashed potatoes this winter!