Dried Potatoes: Varieties

Dried potatoes come in many useful forms. The most basic for easy storage are dehydrated flakes, but diced and shredded potatoes are also available in dehydrated form. There are also freeze-dried shreds, ready-made mixes (just add water), and hash browns that are partially cooked before dehydration. All of these can fill specific niches in your food storage plan.

The additional ingredients in ready mixes may not last as long on the shelf as the dried potatoes themselves, so these mixes should be considered only for shorter-term storage (1-2 years at most).

Traditional Freeze-Dried Potatoes of the Andes

If, like me, you ever ate freeze-dried “Astronaut Ice Cream” as a kid, you probably associate freeze-dried food with space travel. However, the ancient Incas developed a method of freeze drying potatoes, which is still used today by the Quechua and Aymara people of the Andes.

Taking advantage of the dry air and nighttime freezes of their high alpine environment, the Incas would leave a frost-resistant variety of potato outside overnight, covered with a cloth. In the morning, they would walk on the cloth to squeeze moisture from the potatoes, and then put them in the sun during the day for further dessication. Repeating this process resulted in freeze-dried potatoes, called chuño.

Lightweight and high in calories, Incan soldiers were able to subsist on chuño on long campaigns. Like any freeze-dried food, it keeps for years without refrigeration, and to this day, the traditional Andean peoples rely on stored chuño to get through crop failures or even just the tail-end of winter.

In addition, this freeze-drying process helps mitigate the bitter taste of some native potato varieties.

As they say, there’s nothing new under the sun.