GoKawiilWhen I first tried out Tovala, a meal-delivery service and smart-oven combo, I was impressed. The meals, all designed to be cooked perfectly with one scan in the matching smart oven, were a breeze to prepare and tasty. They were all single-serving dishes, so they weren't ideal for families or meal preppers. Now, that's all changed.
Tovala added family meals to its lineup, with two or four servings, depending on which meal you choose. Like the single-serve meals, they all follow a similar formula: extremely light prep work, metal tins to bake in, and a Tovala smart oven that does the heavy lifting.
My experience taste-testing Tovala's new family meals
I tried a handful of family meals, including the sweet-and-sour crispy chicken with veggie lo mein, white rice and broccoli in scallion vinaigrette. The portions were generous, and I was able to cook everything in the Tovala oven at once by using two racks. The instructions detail exactly how to place the meals in the oven for even cooking.
The breaded chicken was pre-cooked, but for a separate barbecue chicken meal, paired with cornbread and creamy mac and cheese, the recipe started with raw chicken, which made it taste much fresher.
The cornbread wasn't pre-cooked either, so this was the freshest family meal I tasted. Corin Cesaric-Epple/CNET
Extra packaging isn't ideal
Although the flavor remained consistent for most of the Tovala family meals I tried, I noticed something that didn't stand out in the individual meals: There is a lot more packaging. Each serving of sauce, pasta, protein or bread is individually wrapped, and although the metal tins are recyclable, the plastic wrapping is not.
This pasta dish had a whopping 23 wrapped ingredients. Corin Cesaric-Epple/CNET
I made meatballs and tortellini with broccoli and garlic bread, for example, and was a bit confused why each bread had to be individually wrapped. I would have much preferred it if all the bread, sauce and pasta were each in one container and if the metal tins were larger. That way, instead of cooking with between four and eight small tins, one or two larger ones would have sufficed.
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