Homemade Ratatouille (Just Like The Movie)

Ratatouille is Remy’s signature creation from the movie – and happens to be one of my favorites to make. Anyone can cook this creative and beautiful vegetable dish!

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If a rat can make this dish, so can you. Let’s make ratatouille. First of all, if you’ve never seen Ratatouille, it’s about a rat who learns to cook and surprises the most feared food critic in all of France with a creative and beautiful vegetable dish. And that dish starts out by making an infused olive oil. We’ll chop some garlic, then peel and rough chop one shallot. And then we can move on over to our stove top where over low heat I’ll add in some olive oil as well as my garlic, shallot, rosemary, and thyme. I’m going to gently move these around to make sure everything’s submerged. And then we’ll bring this up to a light simmer to make sure it all infuses. Once it reaches a gentle simmer, we’ll move it off the heat to let it infuse for somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes. While our oil infuses, we’ll move on to make our peeper rod sauce, which is a roasted pepper and tomato sauce. We’ll roast this pepper over an open flame with the goal to char the skin until it’s entirely black. We char the pepper this way for three main reasons. First, in terms of flavor, we should get a smoky and slightly sweet taste. Second, this process blisters the pepper skin and makes it much easier to peel. And third, we get an incredible texture because the inside steams, it gets nice and soft and juicy. When I say to get the whole thing black, I mean to get the whole thing black. So, I’m even going to turn it up on its sides to make sure we’re hitting every corner. As you can see, this process tends to be a bit messy. So, if you prefer to broil your pepper, you can do that instead. Once the whole thing is dark and charred, immediately transfer it to a bowl and quickly cover this with plastic wrap to trap that steam. I’ll let the steam and soften for just a few moments while I clean off my stove. And then after a few minutes, we’ll remove the plastic wrap and can begin to peel. My preferred method is putting it inside a clean kitchen towel where you can easily wipe everything off. And it’s a method I’ve seen a lot of chefs use at restaurants, but an equally easy way is running it right under the sink and rubbing it off that way. You can choose whatever you prefer. When you’re done with this process, your pepper may look a little funny, but remember the goal here is to make a nice smooth and luxurious sauce. So, removing the skin helps us to do that. The final step is to open up the pepper to remove the stem and seeds. And then we can reserve it in a bowl and off to the side. To continue with our sauce, I’m going to chop a shallot. It can be pretty rough here. How you cut it doesn’t matter too much. And then I’ll do the same with a few cloves of garlic. Then into a pan over medium low heat, I’m going to add some of that infused olive oil from earlier, as well as our shallots and garlic and a generous pinch of salt. And we’ll cook these for a few minutes until soft and translucent. You’re not looking to get any browning on here. You’re just softening them up a little bit. As I let this cook, I’m going to come over here and set up my blender. To that blender, I’ll add my whole charred pepper. Then some tomato sauce. Once our garlic and shallot becomes nice and soft, we’ll add that in as well, and then blend. The goal with blending here is to get a nice smooth, silky consistency. I blended mine until it looks nice and velvety, just like it looks when Remy spreads out his sauce in the movie Ratatouille. If you feel now that it needs any more sweetness, you can add the tiniest pinch of sugar. And now our sauce is ready to be transferred to its baking dish. Once we’ve transferred it to the baking dish, we’ll cook it for about 5 to 8 minutes over medium heat to thicken it up, stirring constantly so nothing burns or browns. Once thickened, I’ll reserve a/4 cup for later, then turn off the heat and go begin prepping my vegetables. There are four distinct vegetables in a ratatouille. We’ve got Roma tomatoes, yellow squash, Japanese eggplant, and zucchini. We’ll slice them using a fairly dangerous tool called a mandolin. This device here causes a lot of injuries in the kitchen, so be careful. And we’re going for eighth of an inch slices. This is just right. Be very careful with your fingers if you slice using one of these without a guard. I tend to always end early. I’d rather buy a few extra vegetables than cut my finger. And since the slices tend to get thinner towards the end of each vegetable, it’s hard to layer those ones into the ratatouille anyways when you go to build it. With my zucchini done, I’ll move on now to the yellow squash, which is a little bit firmer and therefore a little bit easier to slice. Now for the two more difficult vegetables. The eggplant is soft, which means it’s sometimes a little bit tricky to work with here, but if you use nice firm pressure, it should be totally fine. And finally, the tomatoes. These are soft and watery enough that we’ll have to use a knife. Check the other slices you’ve done, and then take this nice and slow to try to get the most even slices possible. To me, tomatoes, the most frustrating part here, but just remember that the secret to that movie perfect ratatouille is nice even slices. It’s time to layer our ratatouille, and the goal is to get it to look exactly like it did in the movie. The layering order I’ll follow is zucchini, then squash, then eggplant, and finally tomato. And then we begin to layer. Now, it’s just repeating all the way around the entire thing. Zucchini, squash, eggplant, tomato. I’ve made this recipe a couple times, and every time it takes a little bit of time to get down the rhythm, but the key is really just to try to get that spacing as even as possible and to move quickly enough that your eggplant doesn’t get too brown. Since it’s always going to look a little bit better the faster you assemble. And it’s also okay if things stick out and don’t look quite perfect on the inside cuz we’re going to cover that up with another layer of vegetables in just a moment. As we get to the final corner of the outer layer, we’ll want to lift and then tuck it under that first zucchini we started with to make a nice seamless ring all the way around. And once we’ve pushed it to the edge and spaced it out as best we can, it’s time to go around with a second layer on the inside. I think at this point I have memorized the entire movie of Ratatouille. But I don’t really think people like watching with me because even my own grandma got upset at me recently when we were watching together and I kept quoting all the different scenes before they happened. That said, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, I would strongly encourage you to watch it. Just a few more layers to go here until this ratatouille is ready for the oven. Once we finish the second inner circle, the final step is to make one last straight covering through the center, which means we need to pick out some really beautiful pieces of our vegetables here. And voila. Just before baking, I’ll drizzle this lightly with our infused olive oil. And to bake, we’ll use this French technique where we cut out a piece of parchment paper the same size as the pan, which I’ve already done so you don’t have to wait. And this protects the vegetables from browning while also making sure they steam and get soft and tender while we bake. This is going to bake anywhere between 30 and 45 minutes. And if you bake for 30, you’ll get nice tender crisp vegetables. Whereas if you bake for 45, you’ll get more of a soft and tender confi dish like this. As a final step before plating, we’ll make a nice vinegrett for our ratatouille using our reserved peep rod, that red pepper tomato sauce from earlier, a little dijon mustard, another French ingredient, some red wine vinegar, and a pinch of salt and pepper. And now I’ll whisk this up until fully combined. And as I continue to whisk, slowly drizzle in some of that infused olive oil from earlier. The goal here is to create what’s called an emulsion. We want to create one nice uniform consistent sauce. And by the way, the reason I have this towel underneath is so I can whisk really hard without the bowl moving. Now, if you’re eating this at home, I don’t think there’s any reason for you to try to plate it just like the movie. But I’m going to try. Partly because this is my job and partly because I want it to look good. And now all that’s left is adding on a touch of my vinegrett as well as some olive oil and blending them together. Then I’ll add a few fresh bits of parsley. And to finish the grand finale, the most important part of all, the chive right on top. And that is how you make ratatouille. I think that looks even better than Rey’s.