Blanched fried potatoes Videos

Not as many vids. as I should. Perhaps this year if I have any leftovers. I have a chicken a la king vid. it works well with leftover turkey. Leftover hot turkey sanwiches. OR a casserole (a few on the net). Happy holidays! KtC

There is actually a bit of science behind your observation. When you blanch potatoes it does something to the starch - I can't remember exactly what, but people recommend blanching potatoes before frying them if you want them to be super crispy. I think it causes the starch molecules to harden or something. So, you are changing the physical properties of the potato when you blanch them, which may cause them to come out differently through the dehydrator. I just did my first batch of potato in the dehydrator and I blanched them because I wanted them to look nice. They look very good, but they came out looking far too thin. I'm afraid they won't reconstitute nicely and your video just confirmed this for me. I think I'll forget about the aesthetics when I dehydrate in the future. :/

The Incas in South America survived for hundreds or years on something called "chuno" (pronounced CHOON-YO), which were basically freeze dried potatoes. The process was to lay the potatoes out in the sun on top of dry straw, mash them with their feet to break the skins and allow the water inside to escape, then leave them out to freeze at night, and then sun dry the next day. This process was repeated several nights in a row until the potatoes were completely freeze-dried. This variety would turn black (since they were not par-boiled) and did not look very appetizing at all, yet they were very edible and could keep up to 10 years under the right conditions. These were called "black chuno". There is another variety called "white chuno" which were washed several times during the process. Since they were freeze dried and could keep so long, it would ensure survival even through years with no harvest.

Thanks for the great video. I grew potatoes for the first time this year and got a bumper crop (well I think it was anyway). I think I will dehydrate most of them. My question is ... how long did you soak them in the water to rehydrate them?

what is blanched?

The tips are based on how most cooks are currently blanching potatoes, i.e peeling first and discarding the skins. Of course, the skin has a tremendous about of nutrients and many recipes call for leaving them on. Cooking a russet potato whole tends to break down the outer part too much, crumbling before the center section of the uncut potato has even finished cooking. That's why we recommend cutting into even sized pieces.

Cool idea for colddays

NICE