Tovala Meal Kit and Oven Review (2025): We’re Nearing Robot Chef

A repast kit that comes pinch its ain smart oven that tin scan QR codes to convection bake, broil, and steam each meal. Phone app offers plentifulness much preprogrammed recipes. Great for those pinch disabilities. Steam power = terrific toast.

Most recipes navigator slowly. The repast kit needs a six-week commitment, aliases you’ll suffer your oven discount. Air fryer usability is mostly conscionable old-fashioned convection. Water levels for nan steam usability stay opaque.

Tovala is the only repast kit I cognize of that comes pinch its ain oven—and I speak arsenic personification who has tested a batch of repast kits and also ovens. Still, nan thought isn't simply wacky. The biggest pitfall of preprepared repast transportation is almost ever nan microwave, arsenic I noted successful my reappraisal of HelloFresh's often delicious but sometimes soggy Factor meals. These almost ever benefited from an improvised move successful nan aerial fryer.

And truthful nan brainstorm connected Tovala is some blase and simple. Make mostly pre-prepped meals designed for a circumstantial smart oven—an oven that's capable to move itself done a number of preprogrammed cooking modes (steam! convection bake! broil!) to get nan desired result. Tovala's smart oven acts for illustration a robot cook for rather circumstantial meals.

The results are nifty, actually. A red-wine braised filet mignon came retired juicy and pinkish adjacent to a small dollop of creamy mashed potatoes. It's a discount steakhouse successful a box. A “tandoori-spiced” chickenhearted and chickpea crockery tasted agleam and delicious, pinch a drizzle of mint chutney. An almond-dusted nutrient and quinoa vessel was drizzled pinch cilantro chimichurri and topped pinch almonds. Each required nary much than 3 minutes of prep, positive a move successful nan oven.

In a prepared-meal world filled pinch rubber chickenhearted and soggy veg, these solo meals are possibly a small miracle. Though, accent is needed connected “little.” These meals aren't big, made for 1 and seldom topping 600 calories. A week's container of meals arrives successful a tight brickwork of neatly stacked, cool-packed cardboard boxes. And each repast costs $13, little than DoorDash but importantly much than TV dinners aliases scratch cooking.

The Tovala repast kit fills an absorbing but well-occupied niche. It's champion for nan solo location diner who doesn't want to resign themselves to nan microwave, but who for immoderate logic doesn't person nan time, intelligence space, inclination, aliases expertise to navigator meals pinch much demanding prep.

An Oven With Your Chicken Parm

Tovala isn't conscionable a repast kit, of course. It's besides an oven, and that's wherever things get interesting. You get your prime of 2 ovens: a lower-cost oven pinch a high-speed aerial fryer fan, and a much precocious “Pro” exemplary pinch steam cooking capabilities. The higher-end, steam-cooker Pro is nan oven I tested. You tin buy nan Pro connected Amazon separately for northbound of $300, but if you perpetrate to six weeks of repast plan, it's yours for $119. Tovala has placed its chips connected lifestyle, and nan conception that you'll for illustration its meals agelong capable to instrumentality around.

This is possibly a smart play. These preprogrammed, mostly pre-prepped meals are a unsocial characteristic for nan Tovala—something not recovered elsewhere connected nan market. You motion up for a definite number of meals a week, anyplace from 4 to 16 full meals, which will get packed into a play cool-packed box. The paper for each week offers a prime of 35 aliases much options a week, pinch fewer vegetarian options but a adjacent number of “gluten-friendly” and high-protein meals.

But you besides must take an oven, which successful my lawsuit arrived 4 days earlier nan meals. The oven doesn't travel pinch an responsibility to support it—you tin return wrong 100 days, if it doesn't work together pinch you—but to get nan steep discount, you'll person to instrumentality pinch six weeks of repast plan. Otherwise, you either salary afloat value aliases return nan oven.

The waste connected nan Tovala meals is ease, without compromising texture. They're easy capable to prep that I wouldn't really see it cooking. It's mostly a matter of arranging a fewer ingredients betwixt 2 aluminum trays. I sliced a fewer peppers for a cilantro chimichurri bowl, but otherwise, nan only weapon I utilized crossed six meals was nan 1 I utilized to trim my filet mignon aft it was cooked.

The oven boasts a small QR- and barcode scanner for illustration nan ones astatine nan supermarket. Use it to scan nan look card, and nan oven beautiful overmuch does nan rest, often cycling done nan aforesaid small trio of functions: steam, convection bake, past a small broil to brownish nan top. It's a elemental trick, but it's a bully one. Most meals return little than 2 minutes to prep, and little than 20 to cook.

I wouldn't telephone nan meals overly analyzable aliases layered, but they were amazingly worldly and varied, ranging from a saccharine chili-glazed salmon pinch pickled veg and noodles, to a reliable red-sauce Italian chickenhearted parm. A globe-compressing “spanikopita quesadilla" folded spinach, tzatziki, and feta into a tortilla: This past was some tasty and a small dinky, and I'd person appreciated a mini side.

Tovala, for illustration astir prepared repast kits, doesn't mostly connection immense portions—and yet a batch of that bully sensation tin travel successful nan shape of a adjacent magnitude of sodium and saturated fat. A fewer meals, each by themselves, return up two-thirds of nan recommended regular brackish allowance for an adult.

The sodium intake is striking successful portion because older adults, surviving alone, look a earthy fresh for what Tovala offers: hearty and delicious meals successful an oven, without a batch of effortful prep. Those pinch disabilities that mightiness make cooking difficult look different earthy audience. That said, it's conscionable arsenic easy to image a young personification pinch a engaged profession and small clip for cooking, and a number of nan meals look tailored to nan crowd that packs macromolecule and pumps iron.

Now You’re Cooking With Steam

I should statement that nan Tovala Smart Oven Pro is besides an absorbing small oven connected its own, considered speech from nan repast kits. On nan face, it's a small toaster oven pinch added steam-cooking capabilities. But it's besides 1 of those wonder-devices that promises nan moon.

The goofiest characteristic is simply a usability that tin scan a number of frozen-food brands (DiGiorno, Eggo, Amy's, tons of nutrient astatine Trader Joe's) and preprogram nan oven connected your behalf, which apparently saves you from reference nan backmost of a box. I sewage immoderate bully Eggo waffles retired of this, but I deliberation I could person besides managed without nan help.

One committedness that's kept is that nan somesthesia successful nan Tovala is besides remarkably stable. When I tracked somesthesia utilizing a wireless thermometer, nan somesthesia curve looked for illustration a wide butte, deviating by only astir 4 degrees and staying adjacent to nan advertised temperature. This is an awesome capacity matched only by my top-line toaster oven picks for illustration nan Breville Smart Oven Pro ($269). Though statement there's besides a spot of a basking spot successful nan rear-left of nan oven. (WIRED reviewer Joe Ray placed nan oven's hotspot connected nan rear right, successful his review of nan erstwhile procreation Tovala.)

But nan champion portion astir nan oven is its steam function. A number of recipes connected nan Tovala telephone app make usage of steam heat, but location are 2 main areas wherever nan oven's preprogrammed settings travel successful handy: Large proteins that want to support their juiciness, and immoderate type of toast.

The basal “toast” usability connected nan oven doesn't conscionable toast. It wanders nan breadstuff done aggregate cooking modes, including broil and steam. The toast is terrific if you navigator it connected nan oven's mediate rack: moist wrong because lightly steamed, and evenly cooked. Steam ovens make amended toast, arsenic a rule. But alas, if you toast connected nan bottommost rack, you'll scorch nan bottom, an instruction I wish Tovala gave pinch much warning. Use nan middle.

Preprogrammed steaming and convection was besides delicious connected a look for chickenhearted thighs, a agelong 40-minute navigator livened by intermittent bursts of steam to support nan nutrient from losing its moisture. This succeeded. But I do wish that location were a peculiar measurement of knowing really afloat nan h2o reservoir is, to create said steam heat. I conscionable sorta adhd h2o periodically and dream for nan best.

Also statement that “air frying” connected nan Tovala Pro is beautiful overmuch conscionable convection baking, but successful a basket, pinch nary circumstantial aerial fryer setting. Fries brownish up good but sensation for illustration oven fries. Wings are likewise champion roasted, not fast-cooked. This point conscionable isn't an aerial fryer. No matter really difficult it tries, nan Tovala oven is incapable to beryllium each things to each group astatine each times.

But nan Tovala Pro is simply a kinda superb bachelor instrumentality erstwhile utilized pinch nan repast kit meals. Tovala's oven is acold from perfect, and not each look is successful. But nan Pro is simply a powerful oven for those who'd for illustration to debar nan difficult activity of cooking, and fto their oven do nan activity instead. Especially connected nan repast kit meals, Tovala seems to person recovered a viable solution to nan uncertainty (and sogginess) of acold excessively galore prepared repast transportation services.