---
title: 'Ratatouille Sucks, So I Fixed It | With Babish'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=uXBxugrV78M'
video_id: 'uXBxugrV78M'
date: 2026-07-19
duration_sec: 1254
channel: 'Binging with Babish'
---

# Ratatouille Sucks, So I Fixed It | With Babish

> Source: [Ratatouille Sucks, So I Fixed It | With Babish](https://youtube.com/watch?v=uXBxugrV78M)

## Summary

In this episode, Babish tackles the iconic Ratatouille dish from Pixar's film, admitting that the visually stunning version tastes mediocre. He sets out to elevate the dish to haute cuisine level without losing its core identity, using advanced techniques like chamber vacuum sealing, compression, and sous vide to maximize flavor and texture.

### Key Points

- **The Problem with Ratatouille** [00:44] — Babish reveals that his most popular episode, Ratatouille, is not very good tasting because the clean, crisp slices of vegetables prioritize appearance over flavor.
- **Goal: Maximize Flavor and Appearance** [03:06] — He aims to prepare each vegetable uniquely to maximize flavor, color, and contribution to the dish, combining slow-cooked and fresh elements.
- **Chamber Vacuum Sealer Introduction** [04:43] — Babish introduces a chamber vacuum sealer, which creates a vacuum causing liquids to boil at room temperature, collapsing cell walls to improve moisture retention and texture.
- **Tomato Preparation** [05:52] — Tomatoes are chamber sealed with shallot oil, garlic, and basil, then sous vided until tender, rapidly infusing flavors.
- **Eggplant Transformation** [06:18] — Eggplant is compressed to burst cell walls, smoked, then pureed with tahini into a baba ganoush-like mousse.
- **Pepper Marination** [06:57] — Roasted peppers are chamber sealed with olive oil, anchovies, and garlic for rapid marination equivalent to a week in the fridge.
- **Zucchini Compression** [07:26] — Zucchini is compressed to release moisture and then cooked hot and fast to brown while retaining moisture, resulting in better texture and flavor.
- **Shio Koji for Umami** [08:22] — Shio koji is used to lower the temperature for Maillard reaction, enhancing browning and umami content.
- **Second Attempt: Improved Plating** [13:52] — Babish tries a new approach: compress and sous vide vegetable slices, then arrange them in a flower shape with miso butter and broil.
- **Final Plating** [15:42] — He creates a flower of ratatouille on a bed of miso-buttered breadcrumbs and crispy fried shallots, topped with marinated pepper and grilled vegetables.
- **Taste Test** [19:02] — The final dish tastes vibrant and delicious, with each vegetable retaining its character. Babish declares he can cook better than a rat.

### Conclusion

Babish successfully elevates Ratatouille into a haute cuisine dish that tastes as good as it looks, using advanced techniques like compression and sous vide. He encourages viewers to recreate dishes from their childhood for a truly meaningful experience.

## Transcript

some vegetables vertically and then horizontally like so. Lift off a little bit slower than necessary for dramatic effect. And let's see if this is good reviewer. >> Okay guys, first things first.
>> Hey guys. Hi. Why don't you have a seat? Um, I'm afraid we have to have a bit of a difficult conversation. I have something to tell you guys about the signature dish from the 2007 Pixar animated film Ratatouille, and that's
that it's not very good. You know, I wish to God I weren't telling you that. I wish to heck that after all that effort and time that that very pretty dish tastes halfway decent, but go dog gone it, it doesn't.
Ratatouille is my most popular episode of all time. And if you go back and watch it, you'll notice I'm very careful not to say, "Oh, this is good." And even though it is the cover of my second cookbook, in the recipe description, I
make no secret that this is a recipe frankly not worth making. In order to frankly not worth making. In order to achieve that Pixar look, those clean, crisp, brightly colored slices of vegetables, you're basically having to
do a dance between how good do I want it to look versus how, frankly, just okay, do I want it to taste? So, the question that I'm seeking to answer on this episode is, can Ratatouille be elevated to a hot cuisine level without losing
its core competencies? And I'm going to see if I can find an answer. By golly, mean, I am going to stop several times. The shoot's going to take place over the The shoot's going to take place over the course of, I think, three days.
the most comfortable socks I've ever worn. And these Sunday slippers are my go-to as soon as fall hits. They have a hard bottom, so they're perfect for the trash. Comfort aside, my favorite part about Bombas is that for every pair
purchased, one is donated, and they've donated over 150 million items. Bombas make great gifts for everyone on your list. Feel good and do good with Bombas, [music] knowing your purchase is doing some actual good. New customers get 20%
off their first purchase. Just go to bombus.com/bish [music] and use code babish 20 at checkout. >> They say you eat with your eyes only last one didn't taste good? >> They don't say that. Who says that you
eat with your eyes first? I've heard that you eat with your eyes only. I >> I don't understand. >> What if a pile of human feces looked beautiful? [music] What if somebody
dalled it up? They did a a is it cake kind of thing with the feces and and it >> Okay, I think you've made your point. >> So, what I want to do is prepare each vegetable in its own unique way that will maximize its flavor, its color, its
appearance, its contribution to the dish. I want there to be slow, hardearned flavors in there. I want there to be bright, fresh vegetable come together into something that is immediately recognizable to your mouth
as ratatouille, [music] even if it looks like something wild on the dish. So, I'm shallots. Basically, taking a whole bunch of shallots, slicing them thinly oil, bringing that oil up to frying temperature, and letting them fry until
a great garnish. It's going to make for a [music] great deep roasty onion flavor. Okay, let's fish them on out. Those look great. They're not going to feel crispy straight out of the oil, but as soon as they drain and cool, they
shallots. We're going to let these drain and cool completely. They're going to stay nice and crispy. Next up, the tomood or tomatoes as you might call tomatoes. And I'm going to blanch, shock, and peel them. To peel any kind
of tomato with ease and efficacy, we basically just cut a shallow little cross bottom of each tomato. And when it hits the boiling water, it's going to make the skin retract and almost peel the tomato for you. Next, we have a bowl
of ice water at the ready. And we're going to plunge these tomatoes into the boiling water for only like 10 15 seconds until we see the skin split. dropping them immediately into the ice bath so they cool off and they don't
further retract the skin, making them even easier to peel. Now, I'm just going to very, very carefully peel back the skin, revealing the tomato within. I'm really hoping these guys stay together. And to try and
juke the stats a little bit. All right. Okay, folks. I'd like to introduce you to my fancy new toy and hopefully best friend. This is my new chamber vacuum >> So, you want this to taste good, but use a chamber vac so that no one can
actually make it at home. Can you explain? Well, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. Um, a chamber vac is indeed an inaccessible piece of kitchen equipment. So, if I use it in a recipe and then say that it
makes things taste delicious, you have no way to verify. You have to believe me. It's law. So, what's cool about a chamber sealer is that this creates an actual vacuum. Like, you know, the vacuum of space, if you will. It causes
vacuum of space, if you will. It causes all the liquids in the bags to boil at room temperature because it's sucking all the air out basically. And the crazy atmospheric conditions cause the cell walls of fruits and vegetables and other
stuff to collapse, improving moisture retention, sometimes improving texture and changing the appearance drastically. So, I want to use this in a couple different ways today. Starting with the tomatoes. What I'm going to do is
chamber seal those with some of the shallot oil in which I'm going to fry some garlic chips. So, we get garlic and shallot infused oil. Then basil and some other lovely things. And by chamber sealing it, not only are we going to
basically rapidly marinate the tomatoes with those flavors, we can then sousvie the tomatoes [music] until they are jaw-droppingly tender. Then there's the eggplant. I've never been a big fan of straight up grilled or sauteed eggplant.
To me, it [music] has a pretty unpleasant texture, even if you salt and what happens when I compress eggplant, which is going to burst all of its cell walls and help it release more moisture
than it would just by salting it, then smoking, scooping, and pureeing it with tahini into an almost baba ganoushelike state. These guys are going on a 275° Fahrenheit smoker for about 45 minutes. Then I'm going to crank up the
temperature and blast them at like 450 until they have some nice golden brown pepper. Basically, I'm going to put it on the stove top right on the flame. Roast it until it's totally black. Peel off the skin. Then I'm going to chamber
seal those with really good olive oil, some really nice anchovies and some garlic. This is going to rapidly marinate them. The equivalent of marinating them for a week in the fridge. We just got that nice and vac.
just going to let it hang out for a little bit. It's just I don't know. Just little bit. It's just I don't know. Just how I feel. Next up. All right. Next up, uh I um uh next up, zucchini. Zucchini
tends to dry out. When you compress it, you're releasing a lot more of its structure, and then you want to cook it hot and fast so that it browns really moisture in. Very curious to see what happens here. Look, you can see they've
been made sort of evenly colored [music] and translucent. That kind of papery texture is gone from their surface. So, what's going to happen when we take them out and cook them? There we go. On my left, your right, we
have the traditional just sliced and sauteed zucchini. On my right, your left, we have the compressed zucchini. Start with the traditional zucchini. Start with the traditional zucchini. Nice. Lovely. Little mushy, you know,
zucchini. Let's try the compressed one. Well, it's way softer. I like it. It might be all in my head. I might be trying to justify this chamber sealer, oil. Let's see what that does. So, of
our shallot garlic oil. There's little reason to use anything else. There might be a reason to use other stuff. What I have here is some shio cooji. It's the the temperature at which the myard
reaction occurs, encouraging better browning. I it also just amps up the umami content to 11. Like this is [music] a big source of umami. So I'm oil. I don't even know if I can incorporate these together. Here we go.
those look different. That's what a compressed vegetable is supposed to look like. You can see it's darkened and it's become completely [music] translucent. Fascinating. Now I wonder how these cook up.
cooking, but you can see that the compressed one did brown better. It picked up more color in the exact same amount of time. Let's try the new one. I don't know. It just less dried out. like it it had body and it was [music]
tender and it was juicy and it was so flavorful from the oil and the cooji getting bammed in there. So, I think these guys are like ready for me to [music] cook and plate up. So, I'm not going to fuss with those no more. Come
on, big guy. Okay, it has been many more than 30 minutes. I think it's been about hour and a half. I would call these successes here. Why don't we try one?
>> [snorts] >> Wow. After true kfi, tomatoes are kind soup. This tastes still very much like a tomato, a cooked tomato. It has the and the herbs. They're supporting actors. They're not in the opening
credits. All right, our eggplant is off the smoker. As you can see, they've shrunk significantly, but we still have lots of nice soft eggplant flesh in There we go. Now, baba ganoush of course has a not insignificant amount of tahini
in it. I'm going to do a ratio of about 5 to1 eggplant to tahini and infused oil and caramelized garlic cloves. We need some lemon juice. Here's [snorts] some of the thyme from [music] the sousie tomatoes. I'm just going to pull that
tomatoes. I'm just going to pull that off. Add that right in there. we're at flavor-wise. It's so creamy. Damn, dude. [snorts] I was going to double strain that and siphon it into a mousse, but it already
practically is. It's in this [music] gorgeously thick, smooth. Look at that. It is mousse. That's a mousse. This is ready for piping. What I'm going to do water. I'm going to put this inside and let it warm up so it's nice and warm
when we serve. All right, folks. All the elements are in place. It is time to plate up. I'm going to fry these first. I'm going keep these guys moving so nobody browns unevenly. I want a really consistent browning across the board.
pepper. The whole pepper in there isn't going to play well. Yeah. This way they are an integrated part of what you're eating. Okay. Keep these guys moving. I'm going to hit them with a little bit of salt. Then I want my smallest, most
darling little peeled tomato. Going to lay him down right here. Try to sear his ass. It's pretty much time to plate up. Oh my gosh. Here we go. Let's do this. First thing we need is the mold. Mold goes right here. All right,
let's get these guys off of the heat. First thing we got to do is fill the ring mold. Now, I'm going to pipe down a little base [music] of mousse. And then little base [music] of mousse. And then I'm going to spoon my pepper rod in
there and some of these crunchy fried shallots. Bit more of this on top. And shallots. Bit more of this on top. And we dot it with our seared cherry tomato. we dot it with our seared cherry tomato. Very delicate little thing. Here we go.
Yeah, I'm not super thrilled with that. So, now the single chive, just like Remy so dictated. Yeah, that doesn't look so great. That doesn't look great. [sighs] Damn. I'm going to have to make this my
Damn. I'm going to have to make this my first crack. The aesthetic needs help. caramelization on display in the outside. The whole thing just looks kind we? You can cut right through everything.
I mean, the flavors, that is something special. This really checks all the Ratatouille boxes and it elevates it. It makes it into something interesting and novel. Now, we just got to make it look right, which we'll do right after these
right, which we'll do right after these messages. [music] slippery.
[music] Babish cookware. You know what I'm trying to say. great and tasted bad, but this last one looked bad and tasted great. Coincidence? I don't think that there's such a thing as coincidences, especially
that there's a symmetry to all things in the universe. A light for every darkness, a hot for every cold. Given that all of existence is one unified [music] field of uninterrupted consciousness, I
have lost my train of thought. Now, my first attempt tasted amazing, but looked like video game food when you burn it. So, I want to try something different. slices of my squash and eggplant. I'm going to salt and sugar them. Then I'm
going to put them in a vac bag and compress them before sousving them at 180° Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes. Basically deepening the color, tenderizing, and fully cooking the vegetables. Hopefully without losing
their vibrancy or their structure. I tried that out with some slices of these veg. And you can see like it's crazy the difference. Like this is how the eggplant looked before it went in the bag. And then after compression, boom,
almost see-through, but they're also still a brilliant singular color. So, I got my sousvid set to 180° Fahrenheit. I'm going to drop this in for 30 minutes. So, my plan is to make a kind of zucchini and eggplant flour, arrange
them in a flour, brush them down with miso butter, and broil them. The miso to taste delicious, [music] but also because it's going to help with flavor, a lot of glutamates. It's a win-winwin. This is a mixture I'd say
you know he's getting serious now cuz he's busted out the chef's tweezers. Let's see how these turned out. They're beautiful. Like they're that perfect verdant green. [music] That looks almost raw. If anything, it looks more green
than when it's raw. So that's baller as [music] you know. That's great. That's It's re It's really tender. They're perfectly seasoned. that's a nice spread, isn't it? That's nice. Yeah, that's perfectly nice. Is
that nice? I think that's nice. Is it nice? So, basically, now I'm going to slice my vegetables on the bias. This is going to give me ovals of vegetable, which I think will weave together into a much nicer looking kind of rose. That's
perfect. I like that. That is going to add real petal-like qualities to this flower that we're engineering against God's will. All right. I have my beautiful compressed semi-t translansucent veg. All of which is
going in the sousvid for 30 minutes. Just like putting files in a filing Just like putting files in a filing cabinet, a big wet filing cabinet. So, part of my plan for this new plating is to have a sort of flower of ratatouille
surrounded by a dirt substrate. Yeah, dirt. Whatever. The dirt is going to be composed of breadcrumbs [music] and our crispy fried onions. So, I've got this beautiful baguette whose guts
I'm going to harvest. So, I'm going to put the torn baguette guts in a food what look like panko breadrumbs. [music] Uh, why don't we try toasting these in miso butter? Why not? About 2 tablespoons of butter for almost a cup
this is going to work cuz these pieces are too big. I'm going to put these in a are too big. I'm going to put these in a convection oven. golden brown and crisp. All right, let's really hope this works because this is
really hope this works because this is all the crispy fried shallotss I have. It's doing exactly what I want it to do, which is it's crispy, but it packs
together kind of like wet sand. My plan is to sort of have this ring of dirt that I'm going to leave negative space in the center of. Beautiful. It's a ring of dirt. Soil. Soil. Not dirt. Soil. All right. The vegetables
are out of the sousvid. And frankly, they are looking perfect. Okay. On to assembly of the flower. So, I have the same ring mold that I used to punch out flower will be the exact same size as the chasm. So, I'm going to take each
one of these guys. I'm going to start rolling them up into tight little rolls. There we go. Oh, there's my first. There we go. Do you see what I'm going for yet? Probably not. Keep it tight. These yellows are so freaking delicat.
that? See what I'm going for? Does this fit yet? Yeah. There we go. There's the flower. How about that? Now, miso butter. Yeah, that's looking good. This
butter. Yeah, that's looking good. This gu is going under the broiler. Now I have one of our beautiful compressed and sousvided tomatoes. Put that right in the center. We have our marinated pepper. I'm going to chop [music] it
very very finely. Almost like a relish. Let's check the flour. Flour is done. not going to be able to hold this for long cuz it's hot. It's hot. It's hot. It's hot. Pipe this right in here all around the tomato. We'll drop our pepper
rod right over top. There we go. Now we have our grilled vegetables. We just need to get those on top without screwing this up.
Oh my god. I did it. I freaking did it. of that. [laughter] There it is. My improved ratatouille.
Enough talking about it. Let's eat it. We're just going to eat it the way it was meant to be eaten, which is like that.
I'm [snorts] excited because this is really good. The vegetables are their source material. They taste vibrantly of zucchini and eggplant and tomato and and all all the bits are there. I'm so happy with this. Now, time
you so much for watching, guys. Thank you for supporting the new direction of comments what you want to see next on this show from movies or television. and extrapolate or what dishes you want to see 10 levels of, or if there's
another show you want to see, or if you have athletes foot right now, it's official. I can cook better than a rat. Food holds within it many memories. Preparing this dish sent me back in time to making the original Ratatouille
episode on Bing with Babish. Just a guy with a camera in his tiny Harlem kitchen, begging his brother to make his nephew dress up like a younger version in time for a 9:00 a.m. release that same day. True story.
I bought him the kitchen set. Was fine. He owed me. So, should you make this crazy chef up version of Ratatouille? Sure. It's delicious. But if you really want to have the Anton ego experience, make something from your childhood,
something your mom or dad used to make. Or if you're an orphan, Or if you're an orphan, grl, I assume