Abstract: Vegetables, specifically potatoes, are sterilized using ultra-high-pressure processing. The freshly cooked flavor of the vegetables is retained by preprocessing the vegetables by partially cooking quickly and thereafter subjecting to ultra-high-pressure sterilization.

Abstract: A method for making dehydrated, shelf-stable, puffed, rapidly-rehydratable, vegetable or fruit food pieces by puffing and drying moist food pieces (e.g. potato shreds) by conveying them in a bed through an impingement drying zone maintained at substantially atmospheric pressure in which streams of pressurized heated gas in a plurality of spaced fluid conduits exit from the conduits in spaced impinging streams at a velocity in excess of about 1,000 feet per minute are directed against the moist food pieces to cause the pieces to be suspended in a fluidized bed. In one case, the heated gas causes the moisture content of the moist food pieces to be reduced rapidly to puff them into porous pieces which exit the impingement drying zone having a moisture content of at least about 4% with a texture and appearance suitable for use as a rehydratable food piece.

Abstract: A method for producing a quick-reconstituting foodstuff including thawing previously frozen foodstuff under conditions to result in thawed foodstuff, freezing said thawed foodstuff to result in a multiply frozen foodstuff, subsequently thawing multiply frozen foodstuff under conditions to result in a multiply frozen and thawed foodstuff; and removing moisture from multiply frozen and thawed foodstuff under conditions to produce a finish-dried foodstuff having a storage stable moisture content of less than about 12% by total weight and exhibiting a Rehydration Ratio representing the replacement of at least 95% of previously removed moisture after reconstitution for less than about 10 minutes in simmering 205.degree. F. water.