Brava smart oven makes cooking fast and easy

Brava

• Brava is a soon-to-be-released $1000 smart oven that
  cooks with “pure light,” uses less energy than your traditional
  oven, and can even cook some foods faster than it takes a
  regular oven to preheat.
• It’s capable of cooking different foods at different
  temperatures — all at the same time — by directing different
  levels of light at each food item. 
• You can opt in to purchase a-la-carte meal kits from
  Brava, or you can use your own food from the
  grocery. 
• Brava’s app contains a continuously-updated list of
  recipes. You simply select one, arrange the food as shown, and
  the oven will do the rest. 

It’s easy to get in the habit of not cooking at home, either
because you’re feeling lazy, or because you’re hungry and don’t
want to wait for a meal to cook. 

To combat this attitude, Brava will soon launching its
flagship countertop smart oven, a $1000-plus appliance that uses
light to cook food evenly and quickly. Using what it calls “pure
light” technology, Brava claims it can cook food faster than it
takes a traditional oven to heat up, and that it uses less energy
to do it. 

Priced at $1000, Brava might not
seem like a necessary device to people who already have a full
kitchen. Brava acknowledges this, but believes that word will
still get around that owning one of its ovens can make the
process of cooking easier, faster, and more
efficient. 

Brava isn’t for every kind of
meal. It’s slightly larger than a standard microwave, which means
it doesn’t have the capacity of an oven. And some foods will take
the same amount of time to cook in Brava as in a traditional
oven. But for people cooking only for themselves or a small
group, Brava could be effectively used to cook a whole meal in
one sitting.

How Brava works 

Brava provided a pre-release demo of the device to Business
Insider, where the team prepared a vegetarian meal. In 10
minutes, Brava fully cooked a tray of chopped butternut squash
and mushrooms, which were added to an arugula salad with seeds
and goat cheese. A side of Brava-roasted strawberries and
Brava-made granola in Greek yogurt was served as well. Setting
the device up to cook was simple, and it started cooking
immediately after prompted. The vegetables came out cooked evenly
and thoroughly, and tasted just like they had been roasted in an
oven. 

Brava will be on sale and shipping in the coming weeks, but
pre-orders
are available now at $995. After release, Brava will be
priced at $1,295. 

Brava aims to be easy to use. The
company wants anyone to be able to use the device, not just
experienced chefs. From start to finish, the on-screen touch
display walks you through the process of preparing and arranging
the dish on one of Brava’s included trays. After the food is
arranged and placed in the device, Brava will target specific
areas of the tray with varying levels of heat to ensure each
ingredient is cooked thoroughly and at the correct
temperature. 

With this simple process, Brava
hopes to convince people who usually rely on eating out instead
of cooking for themselves that cooking at home doesn’t have to be
all that complicated. Brava also touts its device as freeing you
up to spend more time with friends and family instead of juggling
things around in the kitchen during the cooking
process. 

The backbone to Brava is its “pure light” heating method. In what
Brava calls “direct energy transfer,” the light bulbs inside the
device send heat directly at the food, instead of heating up the
air around the food like a convection oven. Brava says the
device is capable of searing proteins, applying different heat
levels to three sections of the tray, baking, toasting,
reheating, and keeping food warm. 

Brava
can heat three tray sections at different
temperatures.

Energy efficiency is a common concern these days, and Brava hopes
to alleviate some of those worries as well. It says the device
uses less energy to cook an entire meal than a convection oven
uses to preheat. Since there’s no preheating process involved
either, Brava claims cooking times can be sometimes cut in half,
or even more, when compared to oven cooking.

An interior camera allows the owner to watch the food being
cooked from the touch display, or via Brava’s mobile app. This
camera serves a different purpose though — it’s used to teach
Brava what properly cooked food looks like, so it can use machine
learning to improve. Brava

If you’re not sure what to make, or you’re getting into cooking
for yourself for the first time, Brava is designed to assist you
in the decision-making process. A team of nine professional chefs
are employed by Brava with the task of creating and distributing
new recipes to Brava devices on a regular basis. There will also
be a community aspect as well, and Brava owners can make and
share their personal recipes with others. 

It’s natural to be wary of kitchen tech, as a few notorious
examples have locked users in to proprietary meal kits or other
similarly annoying features. However, Brava owners are free to
use whichever ingredients they want, and they aren’t locked in to
the existing recipes on the Brava device. However, Brava will
offer a meal service that allows owners to purchase a-la-carte
items that are compatible with official recipes.