• Happy International Mermaid Day! 🧜🏼‍♀️

Dehydrated Hash Brown Potatoes

Joined
Jul 15, 2013
Messages
24
Reaction score
0
Location
Canada
Dehydrated Hash Brown Potatoes


  • Place a good sized pot of water on the stove to boil.
  • Peel and then shred or grate one large potato per person per meal.
  • Rinse grated potatoes with cold water to remove excess starch.
  • When water is boiling, add the grated potatoes and bring back to a boil.
  • Boil for 30 seconds longer. This blanches the potatoes, kills the enzymes and prevents them from going brown.
  • Drain the water and quickly rinse the potatoes in cold water to stop the cooking process.
  • Place the potatoes in your dehydrator and leave until well dried. Don't worry about over drying.
  • After drying, let the potatoes cool and sweat. Once cooled the potatoes will not give off any more moisture.
  • When dried and cooled, bag in freezer bags and store in the freezer until your next trip.

Dehydrating Tip

To prevent the potatoes from falling through the slots in the trays of my dehydrator, I bought some nylon door screening and cut it to fit my trays. Works great for peas and corn too. And it's easily hand washable.

To Rehydrate and Use

I place the dehydrated hash browns in a 1.5 litre Nalgene jug with plenty water the night before and let them rehydrate. But a freezer bag will work just as well. The next morning I drain off the water and pat the potatoes dry. Fry them up as you would with any hash brown recipe.

Additional Recipe Ideas

Try adding some pepper or other spices, dehydrated onions or other ingredients to the potatoes when you rehydrate them. Whatever suits your taste. The spice flavours will get soaked up in the potatoes so try not to over do it.

Makes a great breakfast when served on top of a plate of rehydrated baked beans. (If you don't mind baked beans in the morning.)

Dave
 
After a failed attempt last month wanted to try again. Incidentally I just did a batch yesterday.

Everything was the same except for this part...
I added shredded potatoes to boiling water like you.
As soon as potatoes began to boil, I removed from stove and rinsed in cold water to stop the cooking process. This was to prevent them from getting mushy.
I dried mine on the sauce trays and it worked, I never thought of using screen.
They did not turn colours this time and I tried them and they had a nice texture; not mushy.

Rinsing, soaking in cold water before cooking is key. Even if you are just making fresh ones at home. No rinse means that they will be mushy.

I am looking forward to bring them on trips next year.
 
Any hints re onion? I like onion in my hash browns.. I doubt cooking it in oil and then dehydrating is a great idea..perhaps just mince and dehydrate with the shredded blanched taters?

Thanks for posting the how to in one place. I bookmarked it.

Looking forward to doing my own! Baulys are great hash browns but last I talked to him shipping south of the border was a hassle for him.
 
Any hints re onion? I like onion in my hash browns.. I doubt cooking it in oil and then dehydrating is a great idea..perhaps just mince and dehydrate with the shredded blanched taters?

I use dried onions bought from a bulk food store and add them to the potatoes when I rehydrate them. They're not as good as fresh onions but they still add to the flavour. And fresh garlic is easy to carry and always on hand to add to it.

Like all recipes, they are just guidelines and not carved in stone. Use your imagination and experiment with the recipe.

And always try any camping/canoeing recipe at home before using it in on a trip. This gives you the chance to see if it will work for you as written, time enough to try some ideas to modify it to your tastes if it doesn't, and trash the recipe if it doesn't work for you at all.

Have fun experimenting!
 
This stuff looks interesting

If you do try it, please post a recipe report. (A cooking trip report?) I'd like to hear how other people fared using this recipe or a modified version of it.

Posting recipes is easy. But the sharing of ideas to make a recipe different or better is a lot more fun.

Dave
 
After a failed attempt last month wanted to try again. Incidentally I just did a batch yesterday.

Everything was the same except for this part...
I added shredded potatoes to boiling water like you.
As soon as potatoes began to boil, I removed from stove and rinsed in cold water to stop the cooking process. This was to prevent them from getting mushy.

I think the mushy part might have been because of the way the potatoes we grated? I grate mine pretty coarse. Finer grated potatoes would probably need to be boiled for less time.

Either way, I'm glad you found a way to make this recipe work for you.

Hope you'll give a us food trip report after your next outing.

Dave
 
I'm going to start experimenting with this one over the weekend for sure. With some powdered eggs, pre-cooked bacon & coffee, you could open a paddle-up greasy spoon!
 
I'm a cheater. I make the Hungry Jack cheesy hash browns that come dehydrated and preshredded in what looks like a little milk carton and is on the grocery shelf next to the Betty Crocker box potato meals. You put your boiling water right into the carton, stir, wait 12 minutes, and brown them with some cooking oil. Sometimes I cut up and brown a foil pouch single serving Spam to go with it and bring some fast food ketchup packets on the side. Hungry Jack comes out really good.
 
Back
Top