I’ve Tested Over 10 Meal Kits and Delivery Services—Tovala Delivered Something Special — Here’s Why

If your busy home life is anything like mine, you probably have a head of broccoli, a few ears of corn, or maybe a bundle of asparagus stalks that you bought fresh last week, but are currently at the “now or never” stage — meaning it’s either tonight’s dinner or going in the compost. Even the thought of another rubbery, reheated, microwaved frozen dinner makes your stomach churn. But cooking and cleaning up after making a fresh dinner can eat up a lot of time that, frankly, you just don’t have in your day. Wouldn’t it be great to have something in the middle that’s quick, fresh, and requires minimal cleanup? Turns out there is a meal delivery service just for that, and best of all, it comes with its own oven too.

Tovala may look like one of the many “heat and eat” meal delivery services on the market right now, but thanks to their specialized smart oven, you can scan your recipe card to make sure the preheat time, cooking temperature, and cooking timer are just right. No need to worry about forgetting to take it out of the oven either — when it’s finished, it plays a delightful, memorable jingle (even thinking about it now causes it to play in my head), and a notification is sent to your phone through the app to remind you that it’s ready too.

Now, Tovala meals are designed for one to two people, so it isn’t ideal for families — unless you use the oven like I did and cook up separate kid-friendly meals too (more on that later) — but it is a great option for couples or a busy single on the go. So, is Tovala right for you? Let’s dive into everything I learned over my 3-week trial and see if this smart oven is a smart choice for you. (Sorry, I’m a dad, so bad puns are unavoidable.)

The smart oven is the centerpiece of Tovala’s service, and it’s introduced to you right away on their website. In fact, upon visiting their homepage, the first thing you see is a looping, high-quality video featuring a “slow-pan across the food” style, showing how easy it is to prep and cook their meals.

From here, you could move right along to the “Get Started” button, but I would recommend looking over the menu first, because during the sign-up process, you don’t get to pick your meals until after you’ve bought and paid for the oven. So, if you’re not sure if these meals are a match for your taste buds, check out the weekly menu before signing up.

Moving through the sign-up process is similar to most other meal delivery services (a claim that I can confidently make after testing over 10 similar meal delivery services): You will then pick the number of meals you want per week. I could choose between four meals at $51.96 per week, all the way up to 16 meals at $207.84 per week. For both options, that works out to exactly $12.99 per meal. Their website does advertise that meals start at $9.99, but the most common price point I found was $12.99 each.

After you’ve selected your meal plan, you’ll really start cooking, since now it’ll be time to purchase the Smart Oven. There are two types of ovens, the Smart Oven and the Smart Oven Pro. The differences between the two are that the Pro allows for steam cooking and comes in charcoal black. The regular Smart Oven comes in stone gray and is approximately one pound lighter because it doesn’t come with the steam add-on. What’s particularly interesting about the two ovens is that despite the color difference and oven price, both are the exact same size at 18.5” across and 11.75” tall. At full price, the Pro is $50 higher ($299 vs. $350), but the website is very quick to point out that the price drops to $69 for the base model and $119 for the Pro as long as you place six meal delivery orders within 6 months. There is also a guaranteed 100-night trial where you can return the oven for free if you’re unhappy with it.

On the next page, I entered my shipping address and credit card info. The oven ships for free, and you will only be charged for the discounted price of the oven up front — you will not be charged for your meals until later in the week, when they ship out. While this isn’t called out directly in the sign-up process, it’s worth pointing out that a WiFi connection and access to a smartphone are required, since the Tovala app is used to set up the oven’s WiFi connection. You’ll also need a WiFi connection so the oven has the most up-to-date cooking info, as the meals change regularly.

Next up, you’ll see the menu listing all of their meals. Tovala offers an impressive number of dishes each week — for example, I counted 32 for this week and 31 for next week — and you can filter the list with certain meal types too, like GLP-1 Balanced, High Protein, Calorie Smart, Gluten Friendly, Mediterranean Diet, Vegetarian, and more. It’s worth mentioning that there are no vegan options that I could find in the weeks ahead or during my tester trial, and even the vegetarian dishes came with a good amount of cheese.

At this point, you’ll want to finalize your menu before the cut-off date. In my case, this was every Wednesday evening. After the cut-off, you will be charged for your meals and everything will be shipped out. Since I started my trial later in the week, I had to wait a few days to place my first order and in the meantime, the oven arrived pretty quickly too — about two days earlier than my meals, so I had plenty of time to clear out an oven sized 18.5” by 12.32” rectangle on my otherwise crowded kitchen countertop.

Choosing the Meals

Each week, you can select which meals you want to see in your weekly delivery box. You can even double up and order multiple servings if a specific meal sounds like something you might enjoy. In fact, I liked the Teriyaki Salmon so much I ordered two servings the next time it came around. This was something I appreciated about Tovala (even though it’s pretty common among other meal delivery services, too): its menus are posted 4 weeks in advance. So, if there is something you really like, you can see if it’s coming up again soon, or you can skip entire weeks when you might be out of town, or nothing on the menu strikes your fancy.

As I mentioned earlier, there are several filters that you can apply to the menu to help you hone in on the meals that best match your dietary goals. I also appreciated that a couple of meals were tagged as “bestsellers” or “improved recipe” because it indicated to me that they were open to customer feedback and willing to adjust meals when necessary.

It’s worth noting that the menu is very meat-heavy, with only about four or five vegetarian dishes per week out of the 30-plus weekly offerings. And again, vegan options are completely off the table (or off the dinner table in this case), since everything seems to come with ample servings of cheese.

But, for the more meat-inclined diners, several dishes allow for customizable protein options. For example, the Spinach, Tomato, Quinoa, and Roasted Green Beans meal lets you choose between filet mignon, chicken, or salmon Florentine, all of which are coated in garlic herb butter.

You are able to pick a weekly delivery day from the handful of weekdays that they offer you, and during the course of my tester trial, the shipment always arrived reliably on the correct day — it was Thursdays, thanks for asking — with no trouble at all.

Thankfully, for those who have trouble making tough foodie choices or anyone needing to make last-minute changes to their deliveries, you can still make changes to your delivery up until the weekly cut-off time. It’s worth noting that if you don’t officially skip the week or don’t fill in enough meals for each of your delivery spots, Tovala will fill in the gaps for you at the cut-off time. One week in particular, I hadn’t filled out each spot and was auto-sent two chicken meals (which I’m sure would have been tasty), but for a pescatarian/vegetarian family, it was a no-go. Thankfully, their cancellation and refund process was easy to navigate, and I was able to get a refund. Now, do they require you to apologize a lot, feel really, really bad about it, and promise to never do it again? No, but for the record, I still did that anyway.

Each meal comes tightly packed in a small box with the recipe card tucked inside. Each meal box includes any extra aluminum trays or sauces that you need to prep your dinner. Each box also has a clever little window cut into the side that lets you read the name on the recipe card, making it look like a little nametag. Hello, my name is Creamy Spinach & Artichoke Ravioli.

What I really appreciated was that each box was roughly the same length and depth — though the heights would vary — meaning they all stacked very neatly on top of each other. I would make sure that all their little labels were facing out, too, so at a glance, I’d be able to see what my nightly options were.

The meal box also lists an expiration date to ensure that whichever meal I inevitably left for last was still cooked before it was too late. This also helped ensure that each meal tasted as fresh as possible. Since nothing arrived frozen or overly vacuum-sealed, I had about a week to eat everything before it would get funky.

As for the actual shipping box, it was pretty standard for what you’d get from any other meal delivery service: a branded cardboard box with recyclable insulation and an ice pack to keep things cold. But, since I really loved the way the meal boxes lined up in my fridge like a delicious little Tetris game, I tended to unpack things quickly and didn’t pay as close attention to the shipping box.

The main shipping box, insulation, aluminum trays, and the smaller meal boxes were all recyclable. The sauce packets and the occasional plastic film to seal in freshness were not. Still, I was grateful that this only accounted for a small amount of the overall packing materials, so it didn’t feel as wasteful as some of the meal kits I’ve used in the past, where each ingredient seemed to be individually wrapped in plastic or foil.

Cooking/Preparing the Meals

It’s easy to see how much pre-planning Tovala has put into making the prep and cooking processes as easy as possible. It’s not an exaggeration when it says that prep only takes a few minutes. In fact, I don’t think any meal took me more than about 6 minutes to prep and get into the smart oven.

The easiest meals to prepare were the ones that were practically oven-ready from the start, like the Eggplant Parmesan Lasagna with Roasted Broccoli & Balsamic Vinaigrette. The process was simple: Take the plastic film off the mini aluminum lasagna tray, open the package of broccoli, put it in the second aluminum tray, open the oven, insert the trays, then close the oven. I even found myself reading over the included recipe card a second time, just to make sure I hadn’t overlooked a step. But no, it was that easy.

More complex recipes may require you to pour a sauce over a dish before baking or to apply a topping after it’s done cooking, but generally, it’s nothing too complicated. I was even impressed with dishes like the Penne alla Vodka and the Alfredo Ravioli, where I’d pour a thick sauce over pasta that was either uncooked or partially cooked, and during the time it was in the oven, the boiling sauce finished cooking the pasta.

The only part of the process that might be complicated is setting up the oven, because you will need to download the Tovala app on your smartphone and have access to Wi-Fi. This is because each recipe has its own QR code that the oven can read and set the right cooking temperature and timer. The entire process for setting up the WiFi connection was straightforward — if you’ve ever set up an Alexa-enabled smart device through your phone or connected to a network printer, you’re more than qualified — but for someone who isn’t as tech-savvy, I can see where it may be an obstacle for new users.

After the QR code was read (accompanied by a series of cute sounds and robotic chirps), all I had to do was press the start button. Cooking times vary based on the meal, but on average, I found dinner was ready in about 10 to 20 minutes.

I appreciated that there was never any need for me to provide anything from home, either; everything was included. Where some services ask you to add your own olive oil or butter, everything I needed came with the meals. The only exception was the occasional creamy pasta dish that, in my opinion, tasted a little bland, so I added some extra salt and pepper.

One of the best features I found while cooking was receiving a notification on my phone when the meal was ready. On at least three occasions, I’d gotten distracted while waiting and wandered off to another room to fold laundry or take out the trash and completely forget I had food cooking. I’m positive that had I been using a regular oven, I’d have charred dinner to a crisp — only remembering it as the smoke detector went off — but thanks to the handy phone alert, I never had to salvage a burnt dinner.

During my tester trial, only one dish, the Freshly Baked Cinnamon Rolls with Vanilla Icing, came out a little burnt, despite following the directions. The rolls come raw and need to be cooked in the oven, but after the timer went off, the bottoms were dark and crunchy. Of course, it wasn’t anything that a little trimming off the bottom with a sharp bread knife couldn’t fix, but it did stand out to me, since it was the only time a dish came out overcooked.

Tasting the Meals

I quickly learned that prep and cooking were a breeze, but how did the meals actually taste? The first meal I tried was the Teriyaki-Glazed Salmon because, first of all, I’m kind of obsessed with teriyaki and salmon in general, and second, I was curious to see how well the Tovala oven handled cooking raw fish. In the end, I was impressed with how juicy and firm (yet still flaky) the salmon turned out, and the Teriyaki glaze helped seal in some of that extra moisture and brought a nice sweetness to the meal. Now, in all fairness, when I tried it, I was only three months out from having the best sister-in-law-prepared Christmas Eve salmon dinner of my entire life, so it had at least one major hurdle it had to get over right out of the gate. So, did it earn a Top Tier Christmas Eve Level Ranking? Well, no — and I’m sincerely afraid nothing ever will be again — but it was much better than some of the salmon fillets I’ve even had in restaurants, and made for a nice meal after a long day. That, and the teriyaki could have used a bit more sweet and tangy zing, but again, that’s speaking from a lifetime of teriyaki-centered culinary obsession. For regular folks who aren’t fueled by teriyaki, I’m sure it will still hit the spot.

For the next meal, I wanted to keep the salmon streak going and made the Apricot-Glazed Salmon. I was thrilled to find that the texture and flavor of the fish weren’t just beginner’s luck and were just as satisfying as the previous dish. The apricot glaze even found the right level of sweetness that I had been missing from the teriyaki. The accompanying sweet pea risotto also helped round out the dish, which (dare I say it) I may have enjoyed more than the teriyaki salmon. This came as a surprise to me, because having made risotto the fancy and proper way — i.e., slowly, with frequent stirring throughout — I was skeptical that non-stirred, baked risotto would even work. However, by the time it made it on the plate, the texture tasted right, especially considering the minimal effort I had put into preparing it. Sure, it wasn’t as good as a slow-stirred risotto, but I was grateful to have had time to vacuum the living room while it cooked, instead of spending that time hovering over the hot stove.

I am grateful to say that I’ve been spoiled with great home-cooked meals over the years that have set the bar pretty high. All that aside, I can say that these made for tasty and satisfying dinners. Plus, you can’t put a price on the time I saved by not having to cook it myself or be saddled with washing a bunch of dishes afterward.

For anyone who is on the go or starting to explore a wider array of foods and flavors, they will be more than happy with the quality of the meals that are being cooked up in the Tovala kitchens.

Thanks to Tovala’s many different dietary tags, you can easily narrow down its list of over 30 weekly meals to a smaller handful that’s better suited to your nutritional needs. This can be particularly helpful if you’re looking for low-calorie, low-sodium, or carb-conscious meals.

“Like many meal kits, Tovala is not always low-salt friendly, with some recipes as high as 1980 milligrams per serving. The lowest salt option provided 450 milligrams of sodium per serving, so there are a few low-sodium options available,” explains Ashley Braun, a registered dietitian and frequent Everyday Health contributor. “But if you really need a low salt diet, you’d probably have to try and modify items by using less sauce or seasoning.”

Tovala also has a vegetarian and gluten-friendly filter, but doesn’t have a way to easily filter out common allergens like milk, wheat, eggs, and nuts. Thankfully, each meal clearly lists each ingredient, so you can check out each meal to make sure there aren’t any surprises in your food. However, this does come with the usual warning that these meals are made and packaged in close proximity to other meals that may contain allergens. So, for those with extreme sensitivity, it may be worth considering a different meal delivery service.

Overall, it is possible to eat healthy from just Tovala meals, but if you require a restricted or limited diet, you will need to choose your meals carefully and that large menu of 30-plus meal options will likely be cut back to just 10 to 15.

In addition to the full meals, Tovala also offers a few extra dessert-focused add-ons like Rocky Road Cookie Dough, Apple Pie Bites, and my unfortunate burnt bottom cinnamon rolls. I had wanted to see what the process was for ordering these add-ons, and (like everything else with Tovala) it’s really easy to bump up your weekly food delivery with a few extra tasty treats.

I added my add-ons through the Tovala app by switching to the “Extras” tab located right next to the “Meals” tab. From here, you can easily add them to your cart via the big, round, orange “+” button. As a big fan of cinnamon rolls, this was an easy choice for me, and I ordered two servings.

The cinnamon rolls arrived pre-rolled and raw with a separate pouch of icing to drizzle over the top after they were cooked. The directions were also easy to follow, and scanning the QR code set the oven to the correct temperature. In the end, as I mentioned earlier, I did burn the bottom of the cinnamon rolls. For my second attempt, I added a layer of melted butter to the base of the cooking tray and took them out of the oven a few minutes early, which solved the issue.

As you would expect, you can add, remove, or adjust your add-ons as much as you like up until the cut-off window. The add-ons were mostly all sweet breakfast or dessert-focused options, which was notable to me because several other meal delivery services offer veggies and fruits as add-ons. But since Tovala’s meals and treats are designed around the smart oven, I wasn’t surprised that ready-to-eat foods weren’t available.

Two of the biggest factors that differentiate Tovala from other meal delivery services are the focus on the Smart Oven and serving sizes intended for one to two people. It’s a great choice for singles, college students, or couples, but it is not ideal for families.

But could it be the right choice for you? Let’s see how Tovala compares to the competition to help you decide.

Factor: If you’ve been on YouTube or Instagram lately, chances are that you’ve seen your favorite online personality hard-sell you on joining Factor at least once. Factor is a meal delivery service that sends pre-prepared meals right to your door that you can heat up in under 5 minutes. Similar to Tovala, Factor offers a wide range of meals designed to work with different diets and lifestyle goals. There are a lot of similar filters between Tovala and Factor, such as low-calorie, high-protein, and GLP-1 support. Factor even has a tag that was completely new to me: “Flexitarian.” Don’t worry, it’s exactly what you think it is, but I did make sure to Google it later, just to double-check.

Sunbasket: Talk about a meal delivery service that offers the best of both worlds. Sunbasket offers both quick, pre-made meals and DIY meals that come with all the pre-portioned ingredients you’ll need, just in case you wanna impress that special someone (or just impress yourself) with your masterful chef skills. Having also tested Sunbasket in the past, I can say this is a better alternative for families than Tovala, thanks to its portions and serving sizes that can be scaled up to feed three or more people.

Sunbasket also allows you to mix and match meal kits and pre-made meals, so you can adjust your weekly order around how hectic your week ahead looks. Similar to Factor, pre-made meals can be microwaved, but Sunbasket also includes instructions for cooking them in a conventional oven too.

Weighing the price, time spent prepping, taste, and quality of ingredients together, Tovala is absolutely worth it, so long as you aren’t trying to feed a large family. My deliveries always arrived on the correct day, and the expiration dates helped me make sure dinner was always fresh. While the most common per-serving price was $12.99, which was a dollar or two higher than some competitors, those other cheaper-priced meals usually required a lot more prep and cooking skills. Especially during a busy week, the extra few dollars I’d be spending on Tovala are a small price to pay to make sure I wasn’t filling my kitchen sink with dirty pots and cutting boards.

In my opinion, the biggest perk is the Smart Oven. On several occasions, I’d plan to cook up a Tovala meal for myself and my wife (knowing full well my son would hate it), and also pop in a small tray of frozen nuggets or warm up some pizza so that the little guy could eat with us at the same time. This little oven is perfect for cooking small meals, and I could even see someone taking it along on an RV road trip or out glamping where there’s access to an electrical outlet.

In the end, yes, the meals are definitely worth the price, and I appreciated the portion sizes and balanced mix of proteins and veggies. But the real draw for me is still the Smart Oven. Even after my tester trial wrapped up and I put my Tovala subscription on hold, I still use that oven at least once or twice a week. In fact, I just got an alert on my phone that last night’s delivery pizza is done cooking, so I'd better wrap things up and go grab it.