The Best Healthy and Easy Ratatouille Recipe

Inside: Learn how to make this delicious and healthy ratatouille recipe using tasty veggies. It is a French recipe that is full of vitamins and nutrients that can help you stay on top of your healthy eating goals! 

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Have you every seen Disney’s Ratatouille movie? In that movie, it talks about the amazing ratatouille recipe. It is such a simple recipe to make, but it can also be very nutritious and only needs a few ingredients. 

The Pixar film ie is about how a little rat helps a young man to be known as a great chef because of the rat’s ability to make delicious recipes with fresh ingredients. Even though the movie is all about a rat cooking food, and even if the name of this recipe can be related to that little rodent, let me tell you, this recipe has nothing to do with rats and is a main dish or a side dish that you will definitely want to learn how to make. Keep reading to find out more. 

What is Ratatouille?

The traditional ratatouille recipe is a humble dish from the south of France that combines vegetables with tomato sauce, which are then cooked slowly for a couple of hours. In essence, it is a type of vegetable stew. Don’t worry though, this easy ratatouille recipe is fast and easy to make without sacrificing flavor. 

A quick Google search shows us that a rough translation of ratatouille from French to English means “to stir up” or “to mix up.” So no, this doesn’t have anything to do with rats, but instead is about how the dish is prepared. 

Ratatouille is popular throughout France, and thanks to the movie, its popularity has spread to other parts of the world as well. It originated as a way to use leftover vegetables after cooking other meals so that they wouldn’t be wasted. Over time, many people have perfected the recipe and added different ingredients to give it even more flavor. 

The ratatouille dish was originally known as more of a “peasant dish”, but over time it grew in popularity and can now be found in some of the best restaurants in the world.

Even though this recipe has humble origens and ingredients, it was a little labor intensive because the sauce needed to be cooked for a while so that the flavors of the fresh herbs like rosemary, fresh thyme, and oregano had time to integrate with the fresh tomatoes to create the flavor that so many have come to love. 

​In today’s world, we don’t always have time to let food cook all day and we may need to make recipes like this more quickly. Fortunately, we have tools and ingredients that help us make food faster today. There are also a lot of delicious tomato sauces that you can buy at the store to use as your base and that can save lots of time. Of course, you can add additional fresh herbs and ingredients, but it will give you a head start.

This is one of my favorite sauces and it has natural ingredients without unnecessary fillers that can cause inflammation, which is one of the main goals of the recipes I share on this site – helping you with an anti-inflammatory diet so that you can cure your body from chronic illnesses. 

What are the health benefits of Ratatouille?

This great ratatouille recipe is healthy and is ideal to use as a side dish to go along with your favorite meals. I personally like to eat it on days where I need to add some carbs to my diet, but it also goes well with different types of protein like these chicken drumsticks or fish. You will be surprised has versatile and delicious this meal is!

One of the veggies that is commonly included in ratatouille is japanes eggplant. This purpose vegetable is full of vitamin B1 and has Vitamins A and C and folic acid which can help strengthen the immune system. It also is rich in minerals like potassium, calcium, magnesium, and iron and can help prevent arthritis, osteoporosis, and heart disease. 

Even though eggplant is normally healthy and a good choice for people with chronic illnesses because of its other benefits, for people with Lupus, like me, it isn’t recommended to consume it becasue it contains a substance called solanine which affects the intestines and can cause inflammation related with joint pain. For that reason, I try to avoid it and did not include in in this recipe. 

Another vegetable that can cause similar issues as eggplant is tomatoes. Fortunately for me, I have found that it doesn’t cause inflammation in my body, so I am still able to use it in a lot of recipes. The important thing is to listen to your body since certain foods can be inflammatory for some people and not for others. 

Remember that on this site, the purpose is to inspire you to use whole ingredients, but also to arm you with the information you need to know what types of foods can be causing your inflammation, even if it seems like you are eating healthy.

For this recipe, I use a few different sliced vegetables, including zucchini, which is a great source of vitamin b6 which helps regulate blood sugar and which as a result is great for combatting illnesses such as diabetes. 

How do you make Ratatouille?

For this recipe, you will start by gathering the following ingredients:

• 2 zucchinis
• 1 yellow squash
• 1 red onion (you can use a yellow onion, but I like the color contrast you can get with the red one)
• 2 cups of marinara
• 2 roma tomatoes
• 5-6 cherry tomatoes 
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil 
• 1 tablespoon oregano
• 1 tablespoon thyme
• 1 tablespoon dried basil (or fresh basil if you have it)
• salt and black pepper to taste

Making this recipe is so easy. Start by taking the marinara sauce and adding it to a round baking dish or oven-safe pan (a cast iron pan works well). Season with salt and pepper

Next, slice the veggies with a sharp knife and add them to a large bowl or a small bowl depending on how much you are making, and mix them with the herbs and spices and olive oil. 

Place the fresh vegetables in a spiral form as shown in the pictures. I add the sliced cherry tomatoes to the top, which I think makes it look and taste nice.

Once the baking dish is full, bake at 400 degrees fahrenheit for about 30 minutes (cook time may vary). I like the veggies to be very soft, but that is a personal preference, so keep checking until it has the texture and consistency that you prefer. 

Let me know in the comments below how this turns out for you.