The problem with ratatouille boils down to one thing: water. More specifically, each of the primary ingredients contains more than 90 percent water. If all that liquid isn’t dealt with somehow, you end up with a wet, pulpy mess of ingredients that are indistinguishable in taste, color, and texture.

To remedy this, many cooks complicate what is already a prep-heavy dish (cutting multiple pounds of vegetables into ¼- or ½-inch pieces is the norm). Techniques like salting, microwaving, and pressing are often used to extract excess moisture. The individual vegetables are then typically sautéed in batches to create some flavorful browning before being simmered to cook off more water.

Recipes that skip these steps and call for simply throwing everything into a pot on the stove fared exactly as I anticipated: They were soggy, mushy, and bland. Surely I could come up with a more hands-off approach that would hold ratatouille to its rustic roots but still deliver complex flavor and tender-yet-toothsome texture.

Oven Me Tender

I definitely wanted to skip any type of pretreatment, and that meant finding a method that could efficiently draw out moisture during cooking. On the stovetop, the heat must be kept low in order to avoid burning the food on the bottom of the pot, but this also means that liquid does not readily evaporate. How about using the oven, where the ambient dry heat would evaporate moisture with less risk of burning?

Roasting the vegetables in batches on baking sheets would be almost as bothersome as sautéing each vegetable individually, so I limited myself to using only a Dutch oven and started with the least amount of chopping that I thought I could get away with. I cut onions, plum tomatoes (meatier than round types, with less watery gel), bell peppers, and zucchini into quarters and an eggplant into eighths, figuring that large pieces would retain their shape and texture better than small ones. I tossed the vegetables with olive oil, salt, and pepper (I’d fiddle with other seasonings later) and slid the Dutch oven, uncovered, into a 400-degree oven. Sure enough, after about 2 hours, the moisture had mostly evaporated and the top layer of vegetables was deeply caramelized. But I wasn’t done yet.

Science: Better Browning in the Oven

In a liquid-y dish like ratatouille, the vegetables can brown only when most of the moisture has evaporated. That’s because the exteriors of the vegetables must rise beyond the boiling point of water (212 degrees) to about 300 degrees, the temperature at which browning occurs. On the stovetop, this can take a long time if the heat must be kept low to avoid scorching. However, in the dry, ambient heat of the oven, evaporation and subsequent browning happen quickly, especially since we sauté the onions and garlic in the pot on the stovetop first, preheating the pot before it goes into the oven. Another benefit of oven cookery is that as moisture evaporates, a dark, flavorful fond develops around the inside edge of the pot. Such a fond would take much longer to develop over the low flame of the stovetop.

On The Stove

Heat below the pot: less browning and less fond

In The Oven

Heat around the pot: more browning and more fond

It had taken so long for any significant amount of moisture to evaporate from the vegetables that some of them (like the zucchini) were blown out and overcooked. What’s more, any intact pieces were unwieldy to eat. I reduced the vegetable size to more manageable 1-inch chunks, which would cook more quickly but still wouldn’t require too much time at the cutting board. I also decided to jump-start the cooking of the onions on the stovetop, which would cut down the oven time and would give me the opportunity to sauté some smashed garlic cloves before I stirred in the remaining vegetables. These procedural tweaks cut the oven time in half, but even after I stirred partway through, the more delicate vegetables were overdone by the time any browning happened.

The eggplant had even begun to disintegrate, leaving its soft pulp and slivers of peel behind. That was unacceptable. Or was it? If eggplant cooks long enough, its flesh becomes downright silky. Perhaps, I thought, I should embrace eggplant’s texture and allow it to break down completely. It just might make for a creamy sauce to unify the stew.

Cooking in Stages

I decided to peel the eggplant to create a smooth sauce with no distractions, and since tomatoes supply so much juice, I added them (also peeled) to the pot with the sautéed onions, garlic, and herbs and seasonings, knowing that their moisture would evaporate for even more concentrated flavor. I would hold the quicker-cooking zucchini and bell peppers back until near the end of the cooking time.

I put my plan into action. After 40 minutes in the oven, the eggplant, onions, and tomatoes were so meltingly soft that they yielded to gentle smashing with a potato masher, turning them into the velvety sauce that I had envisioned. What’s more, most of the onions and eggplant had become so deeply browned and full of concentrated flavor that I wouldn’t need to worry about getting color on the zucchini and bell peppers. Giving these later additions just a short time in the pot would maintain some pleasing bite to contrast with the smooth sauce.

I stirred in the zucchini and bell peppers and returned the pot to the oven for 20 minutes. When I checked, a few pieces of zucchini were still on the cusp of being done, but rather than return the pot to the oven, I simply covered it and let it rest for 10 minutes. Now a paring knife just slipped in and out of the pieces.

I noticed that the pot had a dark ring of fond around the inside edge. When left to sit with the lid on, the steam moistened the fond, so I could easily scrape the browned bits back into the ratatouille, making for a simple but robust flavor boost. For spice and heady fragrance, I also added red pepper flakes, a bay leaf, and herbes de Provence (a French blend usually consisting of dried basil, fennel, lavender, marjoram, rosemary, savory, and thyme). In fact, the dish now tasted so rich that I felt that some freshening up was in order.

The intensely caramelized, almost jammy quality of the ratatouille needed a touch of acid. Although entirely untraditional, a splash of sherry vinegar helped wake up the flavors of the sweet vegetables. Finally, just before serving, I stirred in chopped fresh basil and parsley and gave the stew a glossy drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. And there it was, a ratatouille that was simultaneously flavorful and easy to make.

Keys to Success

• Thick—not watery—sauce

  Give the eggplant and tomatoes a head start so their moisture can evaporate and the vegetables can break down into a silky sauce.

• Intact, tender vegetables

  Add chunks of zucchini and bell peppers toward the end of cooking and let them finish off the heat for just-tender results.

• Rich, complex flavors

  Cook the ratatouille in the oven, where the dry, ambient heat leads to flavorful caramelization.

• Bright finish

  Finish with sherry vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, and fresh herbs to brighten the deeply caramelized vegetables.

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