Rat meat is the meat of various species of rat: medium-sized, long-tailed rodents. It is a food that, while taboo in some cultures, is a dietary staple in others. Taboos include fears of disease or religious prohibition, but in many places, the high number of rats has led to their incorporation into the local diets.

In Malawi of East Africa, people there hunted field mice in corn fields for food: they strung the mice on sticks and cooked, salted or dried the mice as a popular delicacy in markets and roadside stalls. In Sub-Saharan Africa where cane rats are found, some people have the habit of eating them.

Rat stew was once consumed in West Virginia, the dish having originated during economic hardship due to a collapse in the mining industry. The dish is an example of roadkill cuisine and has appeared in the Marlington Roadkill Cook-off.

In some cultures, rats are or have been limited as an acceptable form of food to a particular social or economic class. In the Mishmi culture of India, rats are essential to the traditional diet, as Mishmi women may eat no meat except fish, pork, wild birds and rats. Conversely, the Musahar community in north India has commercialised rat farming as an exotic delicacy.

Ricefield rat (Rattus argentiventer) meat is eaten in Vietnamese,^{[unreliable source?]} Taiwanese, Cambodian and Chinese cuisines. Rat-on-a-stick is a roasted rat dish consumed in Vietnam and Cambodia.

A 2020 study on wildlife trade in three southern Vietnamese provinces found that 55 percent of the field rats sold in tested restaurants were carrying a coronavirus.

In Victorian Britain rich and poor ate rat pie. During food rationing due to World War II, British biologists were known to eat laboratory rats, creamed.

A recipe for grilled rats, Bordeaux-style, calls for the use of alcoholic rats who live in wine cellars. These rats are skinned and eviscerated, brushed with a thick sauce of olive oil and crushed shallots, and grilled over a fire of broken wine barrels.