This Oven Roasted Ratatouille is packed with layers of fresh veggies, marinara sauce, and melty cheese. A simple, cozy side dish that tastes like comfort!
The post How to make Ratatouille appeared first on Budget Bytes.
What happens when you take thinly sliced vegetables, layer them in a dish, add a rich red sauce, plenty of herbs, and a cheesy topping? You get this insanely delicious oven roasted ratatouille, aka “the vegetable dish that vegetable haters won’t be able to get enough of.” While this interpretation of ratatouille isn’t exactly traditional, I think you’re going to love it. And once you learn how to make ratatouille this way, you’ll want to make it all the time!
“Easy to make, beautiful to look at, really inexpensive, very healthy and MUCH better than my stovetop ratatouille. My husband and I devoured it. Yum with a capital Y.”
Vicky
Easy Ratatouille recipe in the oven
Ratatouille is a classic French dish that’s rich, comforting, and perfect for sopping up with a piece of crusty artisan bread or ladling over a bowl of polenta. Like many traditional recipes, there are countless versions out there—and mine takes a bit of a twist.
Rather than stewing the vegetables together in a pot, I chose to make an oven roasted ratatouille, which is a common alternative to the stewed version. Not only is oven roasting the sliced vegetables super pretty, but it’s a little more hands-off than stewing vegetables in a pot, which I appreciate. I also added marinara sauce to the bottom of my casserole dish, which ends up mixing with the juices from the vegetables and creating the most delicious sauce (get some bread ready for dipping). Lastly, I topped with cheese, which definitely isn’t the norm for ratatouille, but it sure was delicious!
Recipe Tips & Variations
- This recipe is extremely flexible. I’ve given some approximate weight values for the vegetables below, but you can really use whatever size you have available and whatever you can squeeze into your baking dish. But a word of advice: once sliced, the volume of the vegetables always ends up being more than you estimated, so err on the side of smaller vegetables.
- I don’t peel my vegetables as the skins help hold their shape and add color to the finished dish. However, feel free to peel your veggies if preferred!
- Use soft veggies (and slice them evenly). While this recipe is my easy oven-roasted version, I kept the vegetables true to a classic ratatouille recipe by using eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, and onions. If you want to change things up, you can mix in other soft veggies like red or orange bell peppers, sliced mushrooms, or other tomato varieties like beefsteak tomatoes. Just make sure everything is cut to about the same thickness so the layers cook evenly.
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Oven Roasted Ratatouille
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Step-by-step videos can be seen below the recipe card.
Equipment
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9×13 Baking Dish
Ingredients
- 1 cup marinara sauce $0.49*
- 1 yellow onion thinly sliced, (170g, 1¼ cup) $0.90
- 1 eggplant thinly sliced, (about 1 lb, 450g, 3 ½ cups), $1.56
- 1 zucchini thinly sliced, (about ½ lb, 227g, 2 cups) $0.74
- 1 yellow squash thinly sliced, (about ½ lb, 227g, 2 cups) $0.84
- 3 Roma tomatoes thinly sliced, (360g, 2 ½ cups) $0.87
- 1 Tbsp olive oil $0.18
- ½ tsp dried basil $0.25
- ½ tsp dried oregano $0.03
- ⅛ tsp black pepper freshly cracked, $0.03
- ⅛ tsp salt $0.01
- 1 cup mozzarella shredded, $0.97
- 1 Tbsp fresh parsley chopped (optional), $0.05
Instructions
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Gather all your ingredients and preheat the oven to 400ºF.
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Thinly slice the yellow onion. Slice the eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash, and tomatoes into ⅛-inch thick slices. Cut any pieces with a larger diameter into half-rounds.**
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Pour the marinara in the bottom of a large casserole dish. Sprinkle the sliced onions over top.
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Begin to line up the sliced eggplant, zucchini, squash, and tomatoes into the dish, standing on their sides, and in an alternating pattern until all of the pieces are used up. Drizzle the olive oil over the vegetables, then sprinkle the basil, oregano, salt, and pepper over top.
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Transfer the dish to the oven and roast the vegetables for 40 minutes. After 40 minutes, remove the dish from the oven and sprinkle the shredded mozzarella over top. Return the casserole dish to the oven for five minutes, or until the cheese is melted and creamy.
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After roasting, sprinkle the chopped parsley over top, then serve.
See how we calculate recipe costs here.
Video
Notes
**Try to purchase vegetables that are a close size in diameter to make layering easier.
Nutrition
How to Make Oven Roasted Ratatouille Step-by-Step Videos
Gather all of your ingredients: Preheat your oven to 400ºF. For this recipe, I used one small eggplant (about 1 lb.), one yellow onion, one yellow squash (about ½ lb.), one zucchini (about ½ lb.), and three Roma tomatoes. The eggplant, squash, zucchini, and tomatoes are the vegetables that will get layered pretty in the dish, while the onion will hide underneath in a base layer.
Slice vegetables: Thinly slice the eggplant, squash, zucchini, and tomatoes. You want everything to be similar in height when placed in the casserole dish, so for pieces with a larger diameter, you’ll want to slice those in half (I did this for the eggplant and larger ends of the squash and zucchini). Aim for ⅛-inch thick slices.
Thinly slice the onion. Spread 1 cup marinara in the bottom of a large casserole dish. Sprinkle the sliced onion over top.
Layer vegetables: Layer the vegetables in the dish standing up on their sides, like cards in a card catalog (wait, did I just date myself??). They do NOT need to be perfect. Just start squeezing them in as best you can. It’s nice to try to alternate them in a pattern, but once you get toward the end, you might have more left of one type of vegetable, so just start popping them in there anywhere they’ll fit.
Drizzle 1 Tbsp olive oil over top. Sprinkle ½ tsp dried basil, ½ tsp dried oregano, ⅛ tsp freshly cracked pepper, and ¼ tsp salt on top of the vegetables.
Transfer the dish to the preheated 400ºF oven and roast for 40 minutes.
After 40 minutes, remove the dish from the oven and sprinkle 1 cup of shredded mozzarella on top. Return the dish to the oven and bake for an additional 5 minutes, or until the cheese melts and looks creamy.
Garnish and serve: Top with 1 Tbsp chopped parsley (optional), then serve! This roasted ratatouille is so delicious…and it’s just begging for a beautiful baguette to bathe in it. Mmmmm. You’ve got to spoon some of that sauce from the bottom of the pan onto your plate!
Closer look? So pretty. I ❤️ vegetables!
Serving suggestions
Oven roasted ratatouille makes a delicious side dish for grilled or roasted meat. Try it with juicy herb roasted pork tenderloin. Or serve it next to garlic butter baked cod, where the flaky, buttery fish balances the ratatouille’s rich texture and tangy tomato notes. For something equally satisfying, I’d pair it with juicy baked chicken breasts. You could also serve this as part of a vegetarian meal by pairing it with something like a rich and creamy Parmesan risotto or serving it on top of a bowl of polenta!
Storage & Reheating
Store any leftovers in the fridge, in an airtight container, for up to 3-4 days. I usually reheat individual portions in the microwave until heated through. You can also freeze this dish for up to 3 months, but the veggies will turn out much softer once thawed and reheated. Let your oven roasted ratatouille cool completely before storing it in the fridge or freezer.
More Veggie Side Dish Recipes
Our Oven Roasted Ratatouille recipe was originally published 5/19/14. It was retested, reworked, and republished to be better than ever 10/27/25.
The post How to make Ratatouille appeared first on Budget Bytes.
