I spent a year training a rat to cook ratatouille (seriously)

Yahoo

4 days ago

This is Remy, and for the past year, I've been teaching him how to cook.
I know that sounds crazy, but what if it's not? In "Ratatouille," a food-loving rat dreams of becoming a chef and teams up with a young kitchen worker to make their dreams come true. The duo ends up impressing the most feared food critic in all of France. Together, they prove that anyone can cook — even a rat. It's one of the best movies ever, but so far, it's just a movie. I kept wondering what would happen if I actually tried to teach a rat how to cook and make it a reality.
Rats are some of the smartest animals on the planet. They have incredible problem-solving skills, amazing memories, high emotional intelligence and, most importantly, they're trainable. So I did what any dreamer would do: I got an intelligent rat and built a custom kitchen designed just for him, with every specialized tool he could need to cook the perfect dish.
Once I had trained real-life Remy, I planned to bring in a food critic who had never seen "Ratatouille," dress him up as Anton Ego, the harsh food critic, and trick him into eating food made by my rat. Let me take you through the whole (crazy) process, beginning to end.
Before we could start cooking, the first step was to wash our hands. Remy washed his paws at his personal-sized sink I built for him, and I washed mine too.
Then it was time to select the ingredients. I built custom shelving for Remy to climb, with levers set up to release different ingredients. Only six were correct choices for the dish, and the rest were wrong, so he had to be careful. I counted him down — three, two, one — and he immediately went to work.
He hit the basil first, then the oregano. He avoided the second row completely, which was the right move. On the third row, he grabbed yellow squash and zucchini, then went for the eggplant. He stopped for a quick broccoli snack, but after that, he grabbed the tomatoes we needed to complete the ratatouille. I couldn't even blame him. I mean, who doesn't get hungry when they're cooking?
With the ingredients picked, it was time to chop. Since knives are dangerous, Remy helped by using his weight to slice everything thin. Remy's weight was perfect for helping the knife cut through the vegetables. I barely had to push down. We started with the zucchini, then moved on to the yellow squash. The slices looked amazing. Eggplant came next — not my favorite vegetable, but essential for ratatouille — and finally Roma tomatoes, chosen for their firmer texture.
Once the veggies were cut, Remy helped carry them over to a plate, even though he kept trying to sneak little bites. A true chef has to taste their work, right? Organization is critical in a kitchen, and he was doing an incredible job.
Ratatouille isn't complete without a tomato sauce, so the next step was getting the base ready with my new friend.
Remy tried to light the stove himself but needed a little help with that part. Plus, I didn't want him to get hurt so close to a fire. Once I got the stove going, he ran on a wheel that poured the perfect amount of olive oil into the pan.
We added garlic and onions as the base of what was going to be a delicious sauce. Garlic and onions have to be stirred frequently to properly cook them without burning, and since Remy's arms weren't quite built for stirring, I set up an automatic stirrer. He climbed up, hit the button to start it, and kept smelling the mixture to make sure everything was cooking properly. It honestly felt like the mark of a true chef to keep such a watchful eye (and nose) on it.
To finish the sauce, Remy climbed into a tiny pot on a pulley system to raise a can of crushed tomatoes for me. He dropped it off perfectly, and I added the tomatoes into the pot to simmer.
Remy bit my ear a little as the sauce was almost done cooking. I think he was trying to tell me that it was ready to be blended out. Once I used an immersion blender to combine the sauce, it came out perfect. I could tell how good it was solely based on the smell. Remy and I gave it a taste together, and it was genuinely really good.
Before assembling the dish, we needed to preheat the oven. Remy helped me adjust the temperature to around 300 degrees.
Then, we ladled the sauce into the base of our pan, smoothing it out just like in the movie. Remy climbed onto my head to get a better view, and together we layered slices of eggplant, tomato, zucchini and yellow squash, over and over, forming a beautiful spiral.
Once everything was layered perfectly, I covered it with parchment paper and placed it in the oven to bake. Remy was in charge of setting off a timer when the ratatouille was done cooking — and just like he promised, he rang the bell when it was time to come out of the oven.
After baking, we carefully plated the ratatouille. I picked the best-sized vegetable slices to make sure the colors looked great and stacked them neatly. We built some height and pressed everything down into a mold. Pulling the mold off was a big moment, but it held perfectly. We finished it off with a little olive oil on top and our delicious tomato sauce drizzled around the outside, topping everything off with a few leaves of parsley.
One of my favorite moments from the movie is when Remy places a single chive on top of the finished ratatouille. I wanted my Remy to do the same. He climbed up a platform, reached the end of a diving board that held a chive, picked it up and dropped it right on top, finishing the dish perfectly.
Remy had done it. He made a real-life, rat-made ratatouille — perhaps the first one ever.
Now it was time for the biggest test: serving the food to our critic without him knowing a rat made it.
Dennis, our critic, is actually a real-life health inspector — someone whose job is to make sure restaurants don't have rats. He had never seen "Ratatouille" and had no idea what was going on. We dressed him up like Anton Ego and even set up a green screen behind him to complete the look.
Dennis didn't know why he was dressed up, hadn't seen himself in a mirror and just trusted me to feed him. After offering him a glass of wine — which I definitely need to practice pouring — I brought out the dish.
I explained that ratatouille is a famous French vegetable dish with a tomato sauce. Dennis didn't recognize it but prided himself on being an adventurous eater and gave it a try anyway.
Dennis, or should I say Anton, thought the dish was simple but executed really well. On a scale of one to 10 for visuals and taste, he gave it a nine. He said he would order it at a restaurant and that it made him want to go back for another bite. He admitted he didn't think I could cook this well but was pleasantly surprised.
After tasting and giving his notes, it was time to reveal the truth. I told him I had forgotten to introduce him to the real chef. Dennis assumed I meant myself — but then I introduced Remy.
I showed him the footage of Remy picking the ingredients, stirring the sauce, running the pulley system and dropping the chive on top. Even Dennis had to admit that the pulley system was pretty cool.
He wasn't mad, just shocked. A little disappointed — but not in Remy. In me, for lying. Dennis thought the rat did an awesome job and admitted everything tasted delicious. He even held Remy at the end, which is huge for a health inspector.
When I asked him if he agreed that anyone could cook, Dennis finally said it: anyone can cook, even a rat.
Teaching Remy to cook wasn't just a crazy experiment. It became one of the coolest reminders that passion matters more than anything else. You don't need to be the fastest, the biggest or the best right away. You just need to start, to keep trying and to believe that it's possible. Watching Remy pick ingredients, stir a sauce and create something real made me realize that great cooking, like anything else, comes from heart and effort. If a little rat can pull it off, so can you. Anyone can cook, and sometimes the only thing standing between you and something amazing is the courage to try.
See Remy cook the ratatouille and try some other really cool tricks in my video below!