Short version: salt the aubergine, cook every vegetable separately, then combine at the end.
Jump to Recipe ↓Ratatouille has a reputation for being a dish where you throw summer vegetables in a pot and let them collapse into each other. Made that way it is edible and forgettable: a uniform brown stew where nothing tastes of itself.
The traditional Provencal method does the opposite. Each vegetable is cooked on its own, in its own oil, until it is exactly right, and they are only combined at the very end for a short simmer that lets the flavors meet without anything overcooking. It uses one more pan and about twenty more minutes, and it is the entire difference between the two versions.
This is also thirty minutes of solid dicing, six vegetables deep, before any of it reaches a pan. It is worth setting the board up properly first, which is what the section below is for.
What Your Board Looks Like
Six vegetables, all cut to roughly the same size so they cook at comparable rates. Do all the cutting before you turn the hob on, because once the first pan is going you will not have time to come back to the board.
Around three cups: aubergine tops, courgette ends, pepper cores and pith, tomato cores, onion skins, and garlic papers. Six vegetables' worth of trimmings is more than a small board can hold beside your knife, and the aubergine salting step means the board is wet for most of it.
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Ratatouille
Provencal summer vegetable stew, cooked in stages. Good hot, better at room temperature the next day.
Ingredients
Vegetables
- 1 largeaubergine3/4 inch cubes
- 2 mediumcourgettes3/4 inch half moons
- 2bell peppers3/4 inch squares
- 1 largeonionroughly diced
- 4 largeripe tomatoesroughly chopped
- 4garlic clovesthinly sliced
To finish
- 6 tbspolive oildivided between the pans
- 1 tbsptomato paste
- 2 tspherbes de Provenceor 1 tsp dried thyme and 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1bay leaf
- 1 small bunchbasilleaves torn, added off the heat
- salt and black pepperto taste
Method
- Salt the aubergine firstToss the cubes with a generous teaspoon of salt in a colander and leave them for thirty minutes over the sink. They will weep a surprising amount of brown liquid. Pat them dry before they go anywhere near a pan. Skip this and the aubergine both waterlogs the dish and soaks up twice the oil.
- Cook the aubergine on its ownTwo tablespoons of oil in a wide pan over medium-high heat. Cook the dried cubes until they are browned on several sides and completely tender, around ten minutes. Set them aside in a bowl. Do not crowd the pan; do it in two batches if you need to.
- Cook the courgette on its ownAnother tablespoon of oil, same pan, higher heat, four to five minutes until the half moons have color but still have some bite. They will soften further at the end, so stop early. Add them to the aubergine bowl.
- Cook the peppers on their ownAnother tablespoon, six to eight minutes over medium heat until they have softened and picked up a little color at the edges. Into the bowl.
- Build the base with onion, garlic, and tomatoLast of the oil, onion over medium heat for eight minutes until soft and translucent, then the sliced garlic for one minute, then the tomato paste for another minute so it darkens. Add the chopped tomatoes, herbes de Provence, and bay leaf, and simmer for fifteen minutes until it is a loose sauce rather than watery.
- Bring it all back togetherReturn every vegetable to the pan, stir gently, and simmer uncovered for ten to fifteen minutes. Gently is the operative word: at this point everything is tender and vigorous stirring will break it down into the exact mush you spent an hour avoiding.
- Finish off the heatTake out the bay leaf, tear in the basil, taste for salt, and add a final tablespoon of olive oil. Let it sit for at least ten minutes before serving. Ratatouille is better warm than hot and better still the next day.
Make It Ahead
This is a dish that genuinely improves with time, which makes it one of the better things to cook the day before.
Getting It Right
Cook the vegetables separately, always
This is the whole recipe. Aubergine needs high heat and time, courgette needs high heat and almost no time, and peppers sit somewhere in between. Put them in one pan together and you are choosing which two to ruin. The separate-pans method is what every serious version of this dish does and it costs about twenty minutes.
Salt the aubergine, not the courgette
Aubergine is a sponge full of water. Salting draws that water out, collapses the spongy structure, and stops it drinking every drop of oil in the pan. Courgette is different: it is already dense and wet, and salting it in advance makes it limp before it ever sees heat.
Cut everything to the same size
Three quarters of an inch, across all of it. Ratatouille is a dish where you get several vegetables in one spoonful, and that only works if they are the same size and therefore finished at the same time. It is the same principle as a chopped salad, applied to a stew.
Do not stir it at the end
Once everything is back in the pan, use a folding motion rather than a stir, and do it as little as you can. Every vegetable is fully cooked by that point and mechanical damage is the only thing left that can hurt it.
Upgrade Your Prep Workflow: The ROO Bundle
Six vegetables, thirty minutes of dicing, and about three cups of trimmings before a single pan goes on the heat. Ratatouille is the recipe in this collection that most tests a prep setup, because the board is in continuous use and gets wet early from the aubergine. A ROO Mat grips the counter so the board does not creep while you work through a hard aubergine skin, and its built-in 7-cup pouch takes the cores, tops, skins, and papers as you go, so you are not stopping to clear the board between vegetables. The Bundle pairs the mat with a 13.75 inch by 9.75 inch rubberwood board and a reusable storage bag.
Upgrade Your Prep Workflow: Get the ROO Bundle
Six vegetables' worth of trimmings, cleared once at the end.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What are the ingredients to ratatouille?
Aubergine, courgette, bell peppers, tomatoes, onion, and garlic, cooked in olive oil with herbes de Provence and finished with basil. That is the traditional Provencal list. Anything beyond it, and particularly anything involving stock or cream, is a variation rather than the classic.
What's the secret of a good ratatouille?
Cooking each vegetable separately before combining them. Every vegetable in the dish has a different ideal cooking time, so putting them in one pan means at least two of them will be wrong. The other half of it is salting the aubergine for thirty minutes first, which stops it waterlogging the dish.
What do the French serve with ratatouille?
Frequently nothing. In Provence it is often served on its own as a starter, warm or at room temperature, with bread to mop the pan. Beyond that it goes with grilled lamb or fish, with eggs baked into it, or cold the next day as part of a lunch. It is a dish, not a side, in its home region.
Is ratatouille better the next day?
Yes, and it is one of the clearer examples of the effect. The vegetables carry on absorbing the tomato and herb flavors overnight, and the texture settles. Make it the day before if you can, then bring it back to room temperature or warm it gently rather than reheating it hard.
What is the difference between ratatouille and confit byaldi?
Confit byaldi is the thin-sliced, spiral-arranged, oven-baked version made famous by the Pixar film, developed by Michel Guerard and later by Thomas Keller. It looks striking and it is a genuinely different dish. Traditional ratatouille is a rustic stew of diced vegetables cooked on the hob, which is what this recipe is.
Salt the aubergine, cook each vegetable in its own pan, and bring them together for the last fifteen minutes. That is the difference between ratatouille where you can taste every vegetable and ratatouille where you can taste none of them.