Are you feeling the “Holiday 15?” as we head in to the new year? Is one of your resolutions to throw out all the candy and goodies that are clogging up your kitchen, ditch the mountains of carbs, and eat healthier? The Brava countertop oven can help you do exactly that.
What Is It?
Brava’s countertop oven uses advanced light lamps to instantly heat the oven and cook your food in less time. Because the oven has six different lamps, it can accommodate multiple ingredients on the same pan, cooking them all simultaneously to perfect doneness.
Cooking perfection is aided by a super accurate temperature probe that plugs directly into the oven and lets you monitor the doneness of your proteins via the connected app (sound familiar?).
The top of the unit displays real-time video of your food (important since there’s no glass front, more on that in a second) or you can monitor doneness via the app. Either way, the Brava is keeping track of how done (or underdone) you want your food and will adjust cooking times accordingly.
How Does It Work?
With flashes of light! The reason the Brava doesn’t have a glass door like most other countertop ovens is because it cooks with pulses of intensely bright light. By modulating the wavelength, the oven can adjust how it’s cooking the interior and exterior of your food on the fly.
With multiple lamps, it can also cook different foods on the same tray. So if you’d like to roast sweet potatoes to go with your steak, you can do exactly that. There are even preset programs on the Brava that let you tell it what you’ve placed in what zone on the marked tray.
If “marked tray” sounds a little fiddlier than your normal method of cooking, you’re not wrong. The price you pay for being able to cook multiple types of food at the same time is that you have to be a little more particular about where you’re putting your food on the Brava’s cooking trays. You also have to measure the height of your food (using the convenient markers on the thermometer). If it’s piled too high, you’ll get an uneven cook.
So How Does This Make Me Healthier?
All excuses you have for not making a healthy side dish because it was “too hard” or “you didn’t have enough time” just flew out the window. With the Brava, your main dish and your sides cook at the same time, in the same device. Now you can have roasted veggies with every meal and not add any additional fuss.
Even better, Brava has partnered with the food subscription service Peachdish to provide meal kits that are already programmed into your Brava. You’ll get ready-to-prep meals like Wild Mahi Mahi with Asparagus or Roasted Vegetable Couscous or Tuscan Grilled Cheese (OK, maybe that last one isn’t healthy, but there’s tomato…that’s got to count for something, right?). Prep your ingredients, follow the steps in the app, then select the meal from the Brava interface. You’ll have a full meal in 20 minutes or less.
One thing I do wish that Brava had is meals for four. Right now the app will let you order 2-person meals, but not family meals. You can roast an entire chicken, or fit half a dozen small steaks, so capacity isn’t an issue. Maybe the unit isn’t quite big enough to accommodate protein for four people, plus the requisite veggies? I’m not sure. The result is, I f you’re cooking for more than yourself plus one, be prepared for extra prep.
But Does It Work?
I’m not going to lie, the Brava requires patience. More patience than I was willing to give it in the few weeks I had my unit. Chicken turned out perfectly. Steaks, not so much. Cooking different foods back to back required me to wait for the unit to cool down…which I ignored, so I burnt my eggs. I ignored the zones on the tray and ended up with some seriously sketchy dishes. The Brava will punish you for being careless.
That’s not to say the Brava isn’t good at what it does. It just needs a certain kind of chef. One who’s willing to give it careful attention. And if you do, you’ll be rewarded. When everything comes together properly, there’s a feeling of satisfaction knowing that your salmon and asparagus dish came together all on one tray and that your clean up after dinner will be minimal.
How Much Does It Cost?
Brava starts at $999, but I’d recommend the $1,295 package that gets you all of their cookware (that will let you make even more things like baked macaroni and cheese). That tier will also give you a few Peachdish meals so that you can try out the service.
Without Peachdish meals, Brava is good (if not a little demanding). It’s a compact and speedy countertop oven that gives you the ability to cook multiple things at the same time. With Peachdish, Brava transforms you into a gourmet chef, letting the device do the grunt work of making sure your creation turns out as expected (but like a good sous chef, it only does what you tell it to, so make sure you get your prep right).
Especially if eating healthier is on your resolution list for 2019, you should give the Brava a look. It’s a no-brainer way to make sure you start off the New Year eating something other than leftover candy from your stocking.
