How to Make The Easiest Ratatouille

[Music] ratatouille is one of those dishes that sounds like a great idea especially for homegrown vegetables you take zucchini some eggplant peppers of course tomatoes and stew them together but believe it or not if we were to take all these vegetables and squeeze them we'd end up with this a huge container of water and that when it's all cooked together translates into this this is a watery soggy mess very soupy more like ratatouille soup than anything else all pulpy and even worse the ingredients are indistinguishable in taste color and texture so I'm here with the expert on ratatouille Becky who's going to show us how to make a much better version that's right I think I can do a much better job I know you do as you said a lot of these ratatouille recipes are just full of water even though they call for pretreatment steps like salting microwaving or pressing the vegetables to try and get rid of some of that water we're not gonna do any of those pretreatment steps but we're gonna still end up with something that's much better it's hard for me to believe because we've always gone to salting or pressing vegetables to extract all that moisture before so I can't wait to see what you have in store yeah have a trick up my sleeve we have 1/3 of a cup of extra virgin olive oil in the Dutch oven I am adding two onions and they're chopped pretty large you can see they're in 1 inch pieces we're trying to streamline this recipe and not do lots of fussy prep we're not gonna cut everything into really tiny dice great so two onions going in the pot they're rented to Eastern office almost a peasant dish a very rustic dish and it's turned into kind of this fancy restaurant food so I'm so glad to see you taking it back to simple simple and amazingly delicious I'm also adding eight whole cloves of garlic again we're not mincing them teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper just get that stir so we just want the onions to start to break down and soften a little bit that's gonna take 7 to 10 minutes and while those work we'll go over to the eggplant so I have a 1 and a half pound globe eggplant here this is the usual variety that folks grow in their gardens kind you find at the grocery store so I just cut off the end there so the peeler has something to grab onto the peels can be kind of tough on egg plant and they can give the ratatouille sort of a distracting texture so we're gonna just take the peel off well just trim off the end here and I'll cut the eggplant into one-inch chunk just like we did the onions now you noticed what Becky's doing here as she's cutting that eggplant she's creating flat surfaces so she took that round Bowl this eggplant cut it in half creates two flat surfaces that makes it much more safe to cut the eggplant and any other vegetable really that you are working on so it's been about ten minutes you can see the onions are starting to get a little bit translucent and soft so we'll add a couple of flavorings I have one bay leaf and a quarter teaspoon of red pepper flakes a little spice and then I have herb for loss this is a classic French dried herb blend it has lavender rosemary savory marjoram thyme you name it it's a lavender yeah I think that really sets it apart I love that smell yeah makes you think you're in Provence yes so why don't 1/2 teaspoons of that and we'll just let that cook for a minute or so just until everything gets really fragrant these spices and the herbs that Beck you just put in a lot of those flavor compounds in there are oil soluble so it's a great idea to add them right to the hot oil so their flavors can bloom that's right and you can smell them when they bloom right incidentally comes right up ok so that's been about a minute and now we'll add our eggplant okay and you know undercooked eggplant is the worst it is the work like styrofoam yes it is so we're gonna make sure the eggplant cooks way down because it actually becomes really nice and creamy and silky when it cooks down it's gonna melt down become this gorgeous sauce really nice and I have 2 pounds of plum tomatoes they've been peeled and seeded and these are fresh these are fresh so you want to use a nice fresh tomatoes okay if you can find them ya can use canned tomatoes if you can't find good fresh ones yeah I use a whole 28 ounce can of tomatoes drain off the juices and chop them up okay great so tomatoes go in the pot I'm gonna add a little more salt and pepper 1/2 teaspoon of salt quarter teaspoon of pepper so I told you I had a trick for driving on all that extra water if we left the ratatouille on the stovetop we'll be hard to crank the heat up high enough to evaporate all that water because we would risk burning the bottom of the pot so we're gonna put the ratatouille in the oven where the dry ambient heat could drive off all that moisture with no risk of burning okay so the ovens at 400 degrees well let that cook in the oven for 40 to 45 minutes until the veggies get nice and browned and broken down I love this this is a hands-off redditor been 45 minutes take a look oh I'm too short to see oh it looks good oh it looks great ah okay now I can get a better look look at that that color in the pot that's the kind of color I usually associate with roasting in a big wide-open pan but for to happen right here in the Dutch oven that's great that's right because we had the lid off there was lots of evaporation and we got so much good browning and that we're not gonna have to worry about browning the remaining vegetables so I told you we were gonna turn that eggplant into a sauce so I'm gonna start mashing away here so this is the genius part of this ratatouille for years we've been asking eggplant to stay intact after hours of slow low cooking and stewing but here we go we're actually asking the eggplant to break down something it wants to do naturally and we're turning it into a sauce even better now that the eggplant is a part of the sauce we're gonna get that flavor in every single bite and Becky's got out her aggressions that's right I feel so much better relax I'm gonna have something good to eat at the end that's true see how it's turning into this really creamy yes silky sauce okay I think that's looking pretty good so now we'll add the rest of the vegetables I have two zucchini also cut into 1-inch pieces no tiny little dice one yellow bell pepper one red bell pepper and a quarter teaspoon each of salt pepper I'll just stir that in and you're adding these at the end because we want to keep the shape of these vegetables and some of that freshness that's right so we have the eggplant the tomato and the onion they're really broken down really caramelized and sweet and then we'll have the contrast of the zucchini and the peppers with a nice freshness and a little bit of texture a little bit of bite I'm gonna put this back in the oven for another 20 to 25 minutes okay sounds good so the pot was in the oven for 25 minutes then I took get out put the lid on and now it's been sitting for ten minutes and I've been waiting for eight hours there we go Oh gorgeous yeah a nice bright colors right yeah you know what I love is that the zucchini I can still see them in the peppers there yeah I've just broken down into the sauce I'm just gonna take a paring knife and check and see see how it slides right in oh yeah so they're tender but they're not broken down they're gonna have a little bit of bite a little bit of texture that's great I see that Bailey if I'm just gonna take that out now when the lid was on the pot it was steaming a little bit and you'll see this fund that's been created on the side of the pot that's full of flavor anytime you see brown fund Brown little bits in your pot you want to incorporate it back into the dish because it'll make it taste even better so I'm just scraping off that fund getting it down into the pot all right let's add a couple of last-minute flavorings I have a tablespoon of sherry vinegar no this is not at all traditional but our veggies have gotten so caramelized so sweet that we felt that it needed a little bit of acid just to kind of brighten things up and then some herbs I have a tablespoon of parsley just for some freshness and a tablespoon of basil oh I can really smell that vinegar and vinegars what are those seasonings that you should keep right by the stovetop a little bit of vinegar salt pepper maybe even a pinch of sugar can take a dish from ordinary to extraordinary that's true all right let's dive in now we're serving it hot but ratatouille it's good cold it's good at room temperature drizzle of olive oil for you please a little bit of basil yes please we have some bread there if you want sometimes I put an egg on this and make it into dinner I love you even more I'm gonna go as is because I think it looks like perfection yes I agree but I love it tastes like a stew mm-hmm it doesn't taste like a mush of a bunch of different ingredients you can really taste every single thing that you put in that pot starting from those sauteed onions getting a little bit of lavender and really get yeah and the texture is perfect I like that my spoon has eggplant in it and it's not mushy because it's a sauce so many different flavors it's not watery at all Becky this is the most excellent ratatouille I've ever had oh I'm glad you like it thanks so much finally a ratatouille that is even better than the sum of its parts and it's easy to make to bloom the flavors of fragrant herb de Provence and sauteed onions at chopped eggplant and tomatoes and then stew them not on the stovetop but in the oven until tender then mash the eggplant into a sauce for flavor in every single bite stir zucchini and red peppers in the sauce and finish with a flourish of fresh basil and parsley not to mention a smidge of sherry vinegar to add brightness to the pot so there you have it from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen the most incredible walk away ratatouille thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later I'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 111,305

Keywords: ratatouille, ratatouille recipe, how to make ratatouille, easy ratatouille recipe, easy recipes, recipe videos, cooking show, cooking tv show, healthy recipes, america's test kitchen, americas test kitchen

Id: JF-Lww_jUKU

Length: 9min 54sec (594 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2019

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Why This Recipe Works

Most ratatouille recipes call for labor- and time-intensive treatments like salting and/or pressing to remove excess moisture from the vegetables. We started our streamlined recipe by sautéing onions and aromatics and then added chunks of eggplant and tomatoes before transferring the pot to the oven, where the dry, ambient heat would thoroughly evaporate moisture, concentrate flavors, and caramelize some of the vegetables. After 45 minutes, the tomatoes and eggplant became meltingly soft and could be mashed into a thick, silky sauce. Zucchini and bell peppers went into the pot last so that they retained some texture. Finishing the dish with fresh herbs, sherry vinegar, and extra-virgin olive oil tied everything together.