Industrial relevance: This report compares thermal pre-treatment with physical processes with the aim to increase mass transfer in products conventionally requiring skin pre-treatment. The higher drying rates at lower degree of cell disintegration as achieved with high pressure and electric field pulses are of interest because of the attractive energy efficient means of permeabilization and the time and energy savings during drying. Further, the lower and controllable degrees of permeabilization with the above methods as compared to hot water blanching is of relevance with regards to structure engineering of plant food materials.