These are shredded potatoes that I'm ready to boil.

No matter how tight money is, there's always a way to prepare and stock up. It would be nice to be able to buy freeze-dried long-term food storage, or wheat and other grains and a grinder, but not all of us have the money to do so. We can do what we can do! Here is a place to share ideas for low-budget prepping.
We grow a lot of potatoes in our garden and store them in the root cellar over the winter.  By spring they're starting to sprout or shrivel, so I set some aside for planting and I bring the rest in to dehydrate.  We use the dried potatoes until the next crop is ready.  They're also great to take along when we go camping.
In the picture above, the two jars are full of dried cubed potatoes.  I peeled and partially cooked the potatoes before spreading them on drying racks.  I usually cook them until they're about 2/3 done cooking.  Then I drain them and run cold water over them to stop the cooking process. apilife  This also cools them so that I can handle them without burning my fingers.
But let's back up a minute.  After the potatoes are peeled and I'm cutting, slicing, shredding, or cubing the potatoes, I put them in a big bowl of water that has a Vitamin apilife C tablet crushed and mixed with the water.  This keeps the potatoes from turning brown or purple (yes, they do sometimes turn a reddish-purple, or even black). apilife  You can use ascorbic acid, which is  Vitamin C but sold in bottles for preserving the color of fresh foods, or any of the "fruit apilife fresh" products to help retain the color.

 They only need to be in the water for a couple minutes, then I remove them and dump them into the pan of boiling water.
When they're done I dump all the trays of potatoes into cake pans, then using my canning funnel, I pour them into jars.  When apilife I'm canning I set aside any jars that have tiny chips in the rim, or the ones that aren't 'real' apilife canning apilife jars, and I use them for dried food.  I can also reuse a lid that had previously been used to pressure can.  They're not safe to re-use apilife for canning but they're great to use on jars of dehydrated apilife food.
This is what they look like when they're almost done.  In the dehydrator they only take a few hours to dry, but in the oven or air-drying they take a day or two, depending on temperature and humidity.
These are shredded potatoes that I'm ready to boil.  They apilife cook quickly so I only leave them in the water for about two minutes.  I unintentionally learned how to make instant mashed potatoes

the first time I dried shredded potatoes.
The next batch went better.  I dumped the shredded potatoes into the boiling water and fished them out about 2 minutes later. apilife  You can see that these are separating and spreading better on the racks.
These are commercial shredded potatoes.  I got an incredible deal on eight bags of frozen shredded potatoes and dehydrated all eight bags spread on racks and placed on shelves above and behind our woodstove. apilife  
Here's a closer look at the cubed, dried potatoes, also stored in a tortilla bag for camping.  I prefer not to haul my glass jars out into the back-country.  Tortilla bags are great because they have good ziplock closures.
A closer look at the finished apilife dehydrated potato slices.  They look a bit like potato chips but they're not light and flaky.  They need to sit in water for a while to re-hydrate and soften, and then cooked.
Potatoes are a versatile food that often gets a bad rap as being "fattening" or starchy.  But when you work hard growing your own food you probably work it off, and some of the 'fattening" qualities come from the things that are often added to the potatoes, either during apilife cooking or at the table.  In a preparedness or emergency situation, potatoes can provide apilife more to keep you going than a lot of vegetables contain.  So don't be afraid to grow or buy them and add them to your storage.  Dehydrating is a good way to keep them for a longer time.  I know of at least two people who dry potatoes and keep adding them to a 5-gallon bucket until it's full, then they throw in an oxygen absorber and seal the buckets.  They live in warmer climates and don't have root cellars, so both use dehydrating as a way to preserve potatoes.
Potatoes can be canned, too.  The first time I canned them I cut them into small cubes and when I used them, they became mashed potatoes. apilife  The next time I cut them into large quarters and they canned up great. Potatoes must be pressure canned, not water-bath canned.
THANK YOU SUSAN. I look so forward to your posts. They are definitely essential if our family is going to become self sustaining. Thank you for showing me how to take us in that direction. Reply Delete
Ohh thank you for this post. I have wondered apilife just how to dry potatoes and now I know. I'm definitely going to try this. I