How many functions does a $1,000 countertop oven need to have? Brava, a leading brand in the category of high-tech, high-concept countertop ovens, is certain that their newest model justifies the high price tag by providing revolutionary new capabilities in the kitchen.
And yet, if we just accepted their word for it, we wouldn’t be Reviewed. Here is our verdict on whether or not the Brava oven is worth the steep price tag after using it to prepare a wide variety of foods, including vegetables, steaks, poultry, and other baked goods.
The Brava? What is it?
The oven temperature and cooking time are continuously adjusted by the Brava’s eight temperature sensors and two particle detectors.
The Brava is an infrared and visible light countertop oven. They say it will cook quicker than conventional ways and doesn’t need any prep work like preheating or rotating the food. It has eight temperature sensors and two particle detectors, which work together to regulate the oven temperature and the amount of time it spends cooking on the go, in addition to the six powerful lights it uses.
When you choose a setting and press the button, Brava automatically takes over to provide wonderful results every time, as stated on the company’s website. The metal and glass baking pans included in the Starter Set are split in half horizontally for easy use.
The oven’s primary touchscreen is where you access the many cooking and baking modes, as well as toasting and reheating options. Some of the programs allow you to pick the kind of food, the number of servings, and the method of preparation (or a recipe), and then the appliance will tell you which tray to use and where on the tray and in the oven to put the food. Altering the cooking time is also a possibility.
The oven comes with a temperature monitor and pre-set menus for common items like chicken and steak. There’s also a “Helpful Tips” button you may tap for information on how many servings, how long, what equipment, what ingredients, and what procedures to take to make the dish.
Other applications, such as Bake and Dehydrate, provide simply time and temperature settings and offer fewer suggestions. You may also use the oven’s touchscreen to look up one of the Brava chefs’ preprogrammed recipes and follow along as they cook.
To get software updates, download recipes, and check on your food’s development from wherever you happen to be, you’ll need to get the oven hooked up to WiFi. A smartphone app is available for accessing Brava recipes, which is helpful if you tend to forget to write down ingredients before heading out to the store.
How does the Brava stove seem and feel?
The Brava is not the most aesthetically pleasing addition to your kitchen due to its hefty design and dull finish.
The Brava’s massive form factor and sleek metal coating make it appear like an oversized Apple device. It can accommodate more food than a toaster oven, but not as much as a regular oven. The oven can fit a complete chicken but not a turkey, and the cooking trays are about 12 inches by 10 inches.
The silicone top of the oven doesn’t become too hot to the touch, so it may be used to set a hot tray down safely. Surprisingly, the Brava doesn’t have a glass in the door, but rather a camera mounted on the top of the appliance that shows what’s cooking.
The panel also indicates what’s being cooked, how long it’s been in the oven, and how much longer it will take to finish cooking; and if a probe is used, it displays the food’s internal temperature. The oven will sound a bell when it’s done cooking.
The Brava has a camera on top that streams the contents of the oven below.
The Starter Set has both nonstick and glass baking pans. Egg and muffin tins, as well as a casserole dish, are included in the Chef’s Choice and Bake & Breakfast packages, respectively.
1. Brava Oven Countertop
Just some of the things that we enjoy:
- It offers an elegant interface that is simple to use.
- The oven’s inside is viewable on the control panel or remotely on a smartphone.
- The item includes a temperature sensor.
- The preset settings remove a lot of the uncertainty from preparing meals.
- A good sear is achieved using it.
The things that irritate us:
- It’s a hefty sum.
- In terms of counterspace, it’s rather substantial.
- It fails miserably at getting an entire chicken evenly browned and crisped.
How effective is the Brava?
The Brava provides access to a vast menu of customization options.
Cook
You’ll probably use this feature of the oven the most. Eggs, vegetables, meats, poultry, fish, and even pizza and frozen meals have their own sections. There is a great deal of variety within each classification. Choosing beef, for instance, will bring up a menu with possibilities ranging from burgers to stir-fries.
I started by making roasted baby broccoli and Brava’s Bacon & Brussels Sprouts. Both times, the veggies came out really tender-crisp, so I increased the cooking time by a few minutes to bring them to the point where I was satisfied. The vegetables were scrumptious and simple to prepare. Even though there was no need to preheat the oven, the actual cooking times were about the same as I’d anticipate from an oven.
Vegetables, Prepared in a Brava Oven
Baby broccoli roasted for the appropriate amount of time was perfectly crisp and tender.
The chef at Brava recommended that I try cooking strip steaks of two inches in thickness, and I was blown away by how wonderfully they browned on all sides while yet remaining in the middle at a perfect medium rare. Curious as to whether or not thinner steaks would brown as well, I tried cooking a steak that was just an inch thick and had the same results. Such even browning with a broiler is unusual. The coating of fat on the side of the steaks didn’t brown, which is my only criticism.
Following the Brava’s instructions, I cooked a salmon filet, asparagus, and cherry tomatoes all at once to see how well the oven handled the task. After just 12 minutes in the oven, I had flaky, juicy fish, tender-crisp asparagus, and split but not bursting tomatoes. I enjoyed how quickly I could have a whole and wonderful dinner ready on a single pan, even though it took as long to prepare as it would have to cook all the components separately.
Salmon from Brava Oven
In approximately 12 minutes, we had perfectly flaky and juicy fish, tender-crisp asparagus, and split but not bursting tomatoes.
Crispy with leopard-spotted bottoms, my homemade pizzas slid easily off the nonstick plate, and I devoured every last slice. By eliminating the need to preheat the oven, this method also saved a significant amount of time.
Roasting a whole chicken is one of my go-to tests for a new oven. In order to complete this mission successfully, Brava recommends using a probe and cooking to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit. The good news is that the whole process of cooking a chicken took less than an hour. The chicken was juicy and delicious, but the skin wasn’t as evenly browned and crunchy as we like on our roast chicken.
Both the top, which had been resting on the tray, and the bottom, which had been roasted, had been charred. The lower parts of the legs and breasts, though, were noticeably paler. Even though it rapidly yielded a tasty chicken, I found that it couldn’t compare to a roasted chicken from the oven or even a rotisserie chicken from the store.
Chicken from Brava Oven
Roasting a full chicken in the Brava took less than an hour, although the browning was uneven.
I produced fried eggs (without any butter) on the egg tray that turned out perfectly cooked on the outside and runny in the inside. Not only were they too uniform in shape, but they also lacked the lacy, crispy edges that make sunny-side-up eggs so delicious.
A perfectly poached egg, ready to be plopped into an English muffin, would be fully cooked and not at all custardy. Eggs that were “hard boiled” in the shell were really slightly undercooked, making them difficult to peel.
I found that making toast on a metal tray at the same time as eggs resulted in toast that was underdone on top and overdone on the bottom. The egg dishes took no less time to cook than they would have on the stove, but the nonstick egg tray was a breeze to clean.
Bake
Although cookies cooked well in the Brava, they would have needed a much larger oven to accommodate the whole batch.
When in this mode, the time and temperature are controlled by the user. In order to ensure that your brownies or biscuits come out perfectly, Brava recommends preheating the oven for three to six minutes. I made chocolate chip cookies and a blueberry cake for the same length of time as I would have in a regular oven, and both turned out perfectly baked.
A full-sized oven would have allowed me to bake at least a dozen cookies at once, and maybe even more if I had used both racks.
Toast
Brava toasted uniformly and had a good spectrum of brownnesses.
With the Sear setting, you may achieve high temperatures similar to broiling. I tried it to sear a steak, and although it browned well throughout, especially on the bottom, I had better results using the Cook setting.
Air Fryer
Both the chicken nuggets and French fries I cooked from scratch turned out crispy, but not consistently.
Dehydrate
In under 12 hours, I was able to properly dehydrate 12 ounces of cherry tomatoes. You’ll be pleased with the outcome if you’re prepared to let the oven run for that long for a bowlful of dried fruits and veggies.
Reheat
Meatloaf, mash, and gravy took three times as long to heat up and were somewhat more dry around the edges than they would have been in a microwave.
Stay Toasty
My meat plate meal stayed at a suitable serving temperature for 30 minutes.
How simple is it to operate and clean the Brava?
The Brava is not overly complicated to operate, but choosing a recipe or program may require several clicks.
The oven was sent without a user guide. Once you plug it in, the panel will instruct you on how to connect it to WiFi. You can use the oven normally if you don’t want to connect it, but then you can’t get software updates or use the app. You may find further information and a user guide on the website’s Support page.
The control panel on this oven is, for the most part, easy to understand and operate. In the Cook section, you’ll find several options for everyday meals, and the interface will walk you through each step of the preparation. Before you can push the start button, you have to go through a series of screens and buttons to choose your food, confirm the cooking time, and find the correct spot in the oven.
Many of the Brava’s features require that it be connected to WiFi.
It may seem like a lot of steps at first, but you’ll grow used to it quickly and be confident that you’re doing it right. All of the information necessary to complete the tutorial is included in the app. The Bake option is your only choice if you want complete control over the oven’s temperature and baking time. You may set the temperature and the amount of time for Air Fry and Dehydrate, but there aren’t many more helpful hints or recipes included.
Although I am a devotee of cooking to exact temperatures, I found it difficult to take the probe out of the oven port and the food without burning myself. The probe has a funny angle of insertion, and the cable is too short.
When I used the app, my phone would ping, alerting me that my meal was done.
While seeing the oven’s inside on the control panel saves your back by preventing you from bending down to check on things, the image is smaller and less clear than what you’d receive by opening the door. Remember to re-press the Start button whenever you open the oven door to check on items. A reminder sound, such as a buzzer, would be useful.
A fan will run for up to 15 minutes after you take your meal out of the oven to ensure even cooling. Over the course of roughly 5 minutes, the loudness drops down to the point that you can no longer hear it. It was also inconvenient that I had to wait a few minutes after frying the eggs before I could start toasting the bagels to eat with them.
I must admit that I was unfamiliar with Astonish Oven & Cookware Cleaner until reading Brava’s recommendation that it be used to clean the oven after each usage. Through electronic correspondence, Brava has certified that Bar Keepers Friend is an acceptable substitute.
After a month of experimentation, I discovered that the oven’s inside could be cleaned using a moist paper towel to remove the majority of the filth. More persistent stains came out easily with a little application of a paste mixed with Bar Keepers Friend. Hand cleaning the trays is how Brava recommends to keep them in top condition, and I found that they were simple to clean.
Warranty
The Brava range has a 1-year guarantee on parts and labor. Within one hundred days after purchase, you may get a complete refund.
Owner Recommendations
The Brava has received a 4.5/5 rating from 105 reviews on its own website, the only place where it is offered at this time. One user claims it doesn’t brown anything but toast, while another claims it burns anything they put in it. On Facebook, there is a restricted group called “Brava Home Community” that has well over 2,500 members. Many of them are enthusiastic Brava users who freely exchange recipes, recommendations, and images with one another and the Brava staff.
Several chefs have reported success in making ghee or clarified butter in the oven. Users have complained in a few threads about how tough it is to scrub the top of their ovens.
Does cooking in a Brava oven make sense?
The Brava is an interesting and helpful technology, but it’s overpriced for most people.
Why anybody would ever need the Brava is beyond me. Almost all of us have access to a full-sized oven, which is much more convenient and can accommodate a larger quantity of food at once. In addition, most of us own either a toaster or a toaster oven, which may be used to toast bread quickly and efficiently. A toaster oven’s versatility means that those of us who own one may use it for other, smaller-scale meals as well. And for around the same price as the Brava, you could have a range and a toaster.
However, the Brava is a fast and easy to use countertop oven that is worth the price if you want high-tech gadgets and/or prefer them over a standard range. It might be helpful for novice chefs since it removes most of the guessing from the cooking process. Don’t get rid of your big oven just yet, since you’ll need it to bake a lot of cookies and roast a turkey.
