Tovala Meal Equipment and Oven Evaluate (2025): We’re Nearing Robotic Chef

That is maybe a sensible play. These preprogrammed, principally pre-prepped meals are a singular function for the Tovala—one thing not discovered elsewhere available on the market. You join a sure variety of meals per week, anyplace from 4 to 16 complete meals, which is able to arrive packed right into a weekly cool-packed field. The menu for every week provides a selection of 35 or extra choices per week, with few vegetarian choices however a good variety of “gluten-friendly” and high-protein meals.

However you additionally should select an oven, which in my case arrived 4 days earlier than the meals. The oven does not include an obligation to maintain it—you possibly can return inside 100 days, if it does not agree with you—however to get the steep low cost, you may have to stay with six weeks of meal plan. In any other case, you both pay full worth or return the oven.

The promote on the Tovala meals is ease, with out compromising texture. They’re straightforward sufficient to prep that I would not actually contemplate it cooking. It is principally a matter of arranging a couple of elements between two aluminum trays. I sliced a couple of peppers for a cilantro chimichurri bowl, however in any other case, the one knife I used throughout six meals was the one I used to chop my filet mignon after it was cooked.

{Photograph}: Matthew Korfhage

The oven boasts just a little QR- and barcode scanner like those on the grocery store. Use it to scan the recipe card, and the oven just about does the remaining, typically biking via the identical little trio of features: steam, convection bake, then just a little broil to brown the highest. It is a easy trick, but it surely’s an excellent one. Most meals take lower than 2 minutes to prep, and fewer than 20 to cook dinner.

I would not name the meals overly advanced or layered, however they have been surprisingly worldly and diverse, starting from a candy chili-glazed salmon with pickled veg and noodles, to a reputable red-sauce Italian rooster parm. A globe-compressing “spanikopita quesadilla” folded spinach, tzatziki, and feta right into a tortilla: This final was each tasty and just a little dinky, and I would have appreciated a small facet.