Recipe
The Easiest Summer Vegetable Ratatouille Recipe
I have a deep love affair with French cooking, and the movie Ratatouille. As a child, I saw so much of myself in Remy the Rat: all I ever wanted was to live in New York City and cook all the time. And now, ten years after the movie's release, I can honestly say that I'm living that life. Despite this passion for French cuisine and a fictional street rat, I have never actually made ratatouille.
What is Ratatouille...
Ratatouille is a French Provençal dish composed of vegetables stewed in some kind of tomato sauce. It seems relatively simple, yet there are a lot of components that go into making this dish.
However, after finding myself with more summer vegetables than I knew what to do with (and we already know that I hate wasting summer produce,) I knew that I needed to create my very own ratatouille recipe.
Below you will find a ratatouille packed with flavor and cooked in a heavily-seasoned tomato sauce. You can add or take away any of the herbs that I used, depending on your preference. I prepared mine in a Dutch oven, but you can use a nonstick coated pot.
While I would usually crush the tomatoes for the sauce myself, sauce tomatoes are currently out of season, so I used Pastene tomatoes. Note: this is not tomato sauce that you would buy for pasta. It is just the base of a sauce and needs to be cooked!
Scroll on to discover the yummiest and most colorful ratatouille recipe!
Ratatouille
- Prep Time: 30 mins
- Cook Time: 3 hrs
- Total Time: 3 hrs 30 mins
- Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 3 tbsp high quality olive oil
- Generous pinch salt and black pepper
- 2 tsp crushed red pepper
- 3 tbsp roughly chopped basil
- 2 tbsp roughly chopped parsley
- 1 very large or 1 1/2 medium chopped shallot
- 1 clove minced garlic
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/2 tsp dried thyme
- 1/2 tsp dried rosemary
- 1 can crushed tomatoes
- 1 to 1 1/2 cup red wine
- 2 large summer squash
- 1 eggplant
- 1 bell pepper
- 1 large red onion
- Extra olive oil and herbs listed above for drizzling