Potato Flakes: What You Need to Know About Storing Them Long-Term

Food security is essential to ensuring that your family always has access to nutritious food. So, developing a DIY long term food storage is important. 

Now, storing nutrient-dense grains such as rice, beans, oats, lentils, wheat, and more is a great way to get started. However, there are other essential food items that you must add to your long-term storage plan to get enough variety to really thrive under any circumstance. One of these food item is potato flakes!

Potato flakes are a great alternative to fresh potatoes. In an emergency, you might not have access to fresh produce, including potatoes. You want to be sure that you and your family are getting all the nutrients you need, so potato flakes and other alternatives to fresh produce are necessary.

In general, potato flakes have a long shelf-life and they won’t spoil very easily. They can stay fresh for 25 years or more! However, you need to store them properly to truly increase their shelf-life.

There are a few things you must do to ensure that you are properly storing your potato flakes.

No Flavor Enhancers or Additives

When you are buying potato flakes at the grocery store, you will find several flavors such as cheddar cheese, garlic and herb, and more.

Now, these flavors are delicious! It may be tempting to buy them instantly, but they won’t stay fresh for very long. They will go bad much quicker than plain potato flakes, as the additive flavors start going bad quickly which then affects the overall shelf-life. Now, if you are just looking for short-term food storage, flavored potato flakes might be a good idea.

However, we want to emphasize that flavored potato flakes are not a good choice for long-term storage. Anyone who is storing potato flakes long-term must pay close attention to the ingedients before making a purchase, as there could be sneaky additives in the “plain” potato flakes they find on the shelf.

Plain potato flakes must essentially contain: 

• Potato flakes
• Citric acid
• Monoglycerides
• Sodium acid pyrophosphate

With these basic ingredients, potato flakes can be stored for up to 30 years.

Storage Containers and Types of Packaging

Apart from additives, the types of packaging will also affect the shelf-life of potato flakes. The types of packaging that you must avoid are cardboard boxes or flimsy plastic packaging. Potato flakes in these types of packaging will go bad very quickly— they may even already have a decreased shelf-life by the time you bring them home from the store.

The best type of packaging for potato flakes is a Mylar bag. When potato flakes are packed in a Mylar bag, they are airtight, moisture proof, and light blocking, which extends their shelf-life by up to 30 years.

Storage Organization and Location

Now, you have considered the above two factors and bought potato flakes with no additives along with Mylar bags. The last thing you need to consider is storage organization and location!

If you have prepped before, you might have a system to organize your food items. However, if you are a new prepper, you might not have an organization system in place— that’s where we step in to help you!

To start organizing your stockpile, you must mark the name of the item, packaging date, and expiration date. Also, you should implement the first in first out method. This method is pretty simple. All you need to do is put the items you prepped first in the front, and then put the items you prepped most recently in the back.

Apart from the organization, the storage location is critical too. You must keep potato flakes in a cool, dry, and dark place. For example, the basement, cellar, pantry, or an insulated attic.

Bottom Line

Potato flakes are a great susbstitite to fresh potatoes when you are in an emergency situation, or even just in a pinch. However, you need to store them effectively, using the methods provided in this article, if you want to maximize their shelf-life.

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