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Pros
- Good selection of meals
- Meals are tasty
- Easy to use
- QR and barcoding scanning capabilities
- Frequent sales on the oven
Cons
- Can only cook one meal at a time
- Have to buy the oven separately from the meal kit
The meal delivery services we’ve tested so far at CNET have all followed a fairly basic formula: premade meals are delivered, fresh or frozen, with suggested methods for heating them on the stove or in your oven, air fryer or microwave.
The quality of food has been our main focus in determining the best premade meal subscriptions. Tovala, a meal delivery service paired with a smart oven, is the first we’ve tried that strives to do the reheating for you with exacting precision.
When I set out to try the unique service, my gimmick radar was on high alert. But then I tried it.
Tovala’s meal delivery service might just be one of the best on the market. The meals I tried were consistently delicious, the oven is a breeze to use once set up and its compact footprint won’t crowd your counter. But my favorite perk? Saying goodbye to plastic containers, which means no microplastics sneaking into my food and zero prep work to boot.
Although this meal kit does require the Tovala Smart Oven, you can frequently find it on a deep discount. Right now, you can get it for free with the code SPRINGEATS26 when you sign up for a meal subscription.
Here’s my experience with the Tovala Smart Oven and the brand’s custom meals.
How does the Tovala Smart Oven work?
Tovala is a scan-to-cook oven meal delivery service.
Tovala launched in 2016, so it’s a handful of years younger than some of the big-name meal services such as HelloFresh and Blue Apron, but it sets itself apart with a smart oven designed specifically for its meals.
The newest version of the oven, the Smart Oven Pro, is normally $300 but is currently being offered for free when you buy a meal plan. The charcoal-black oven has six modes — bake, broil, toast, reheat, air fry and steam — and comes with an air-fry basket, sheet tray, crumb tray and oven mitt.
The Tovala Oven can only cook one meal at a time.
Although you can use it as a regular toaster oven, you’ll need to register it, connect it to Wi-Fi and download the Tovala app to use it as intended with Tovala meals.
When you order the Tovala meals, each recipe card has a QR code that you scan with your smartphone’s camera. This sends the meal information directly to the oven and queues it up for a custom cooking program, so when you’re ready to pop your trays in, all you have to do is press start.
The oven uses precise cooking times, modes and temperatures tailored for each meal, so there’s no wondering when to pull your maple bourbon meatballs or petit filet mignon out of it.
While the meal cooks, your phone and the oven display a countdown timer, and your phone also shows the exact time that the meal will be ready.
My meatballs and sweet potatoes were ready to eat in no time.
The steam mode is the main difference between this version and the original Tovala Smart Oven. The Smart Oven Pro uses a small amount of water to generate steam during cooking, helping produce juicier meals. (And yes, steam and water do play an important role in toasting.)
If you pause or cancel your meal plan, you can still scan a number of QR codes and barcodes on other food items, particularly frozen groceries, and automatically send the cooking instructions to your smart oven as if you’d scanned a Tovala QR code.
@cnetdotcom When CNET editor first got the pitch for the Tovala smart oven meal system, she was a little skeptical based on price and the idea of buying a whole toaster oven for a meal service. But now she says it might just be her favorite service on the market. Cook a meal with us and see it in action. Head to CNET.com to read her full review. #tovala #smartoven #mealdelivery #mealservice ♬ original sound – CNET
Tovala meal plans and pricing
There are more than 30 meals to choose from each week, many of them customizable. While you may see similar ingredients used, you’ll rarely — if ever — see the same meals offered two weeks in a row.
The meals range from $10 to $14 each and become cheaper when you buy more. Shipping is $11 a box. Each meal is one serving.
For six meals a week, the price breaks down to $13 per meal.
Although there are between four and six vegetarian meals each week, there are rarely any vegan options. So if you are solely a plant-based eater, choosing a dedicated vegan meal kit is the better option.
However, there are options for other diets, and you can filter the weekly menu by meal type, including GLP-1 balanced, high-protein, Mediterranean, gluten-friendly, carb-conscious, calorie-smart, lower-sodium and vegetarian.
The meals
Ginger tamari-glazed salmon.
Ginger tamari-glazed salmon: This was delicious and one of my favorite meals of the week. The salmon tasted fresh and wasn’t dry after cooking, and the noodles made it extremely filling. The tamari sauce also had great flavor.
The petit filet mignon and garlic herb shrimp surf & turf.
Petit filet mignon and garlic herb shrimp surf & turf: I considered this meal the biggest test for the Tovala oven, yet it really wowed me. I wasn’t sure how it would cook a steak but it did so perfectly. It was also the only meal that allowed you to choose the doneness, depending on how you like your meat cooked.
The maple bourbon BBQ meatballs came with six meatballs.
Maple-bourbon BBQ meatballs with pecan-streusel sweet potatoes: I liked the flavor of these meatballs and the nuts in the sweet potatoes but the side dish needed a bit more seasoning.
Yellow curry hake and white rice.
Yellow curry hake and white rice: The fish tasted fresh, and the curry helped a lot with this meal, but like the one above, the rice and vegetables on the side lacked flavor and would have been elevated with extra seasonings.
BBQ chicken breast with bacon, green beans and cheddar grits: The chicken and sides were perfectly cooked. Even though no dry seasonings were added to the chicken, the BBQ sauce did all of the heavy lifting and left the chicken moist and delicious. As someone who usually hates cooking chicken, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy this meal was.
Who is the Tovala Smart Oven and meal delivery service good for?
I envision this meal service and oven combination best for someone who lives alone, works from home or wants home-cooked meals without all of the prep work.
Because all the meals are single-serving, it’s a great option for one or two people, but less ideal for a full family. That’s why I think it works especially well for someone who works from home and doesn’t want to spend most of their lunch break standing over a hot stove. You can pop a meal into the oven between meetings and have something that feels and tastes homemade ready in a fraction of the time it would take to cook from scratch.
Because these meals sit somewhere between a full meal kit and a prepared meal delivery service, I could also see the service working well for a college student or a new cook who wants something “homemade” without the grunt work. There is very light prep work and all of the meals I tried took 5 minutes or less to prepare for the oven. I also froze a couple of the proteins that I didn’t plan to use right away, and they all tasted just as good as if I had cooked them the day I received them.
However, if you have no plans to use the smart oven features or subscribe to the meal delivery service, you’ll probably be better off with a traditional, multi-functional toaster oven like Our Place’s Original Wonder Oven, which is even more compact than the Tovala Smart Oven but offers similar versatility.
