If you cook the hell out of your food simply because you're afraid of undercooking it, the Breville Joule Oven Pro(opens in a new tab) might be the kitchen gadget for you. Whether you're outright bad in the kitchen or you just want to learn some new skills, this smart oven can teach you how to cook, so you never need to eat food that resembles cardboard again.
The latest addition to Breville's line of smart air fryer ovens takes the "smart" in smart oven to new heights. It has WiFi connectivity and a compatible smartphone app stocked with recipes designed for use in the oven. And it gives you step-by-step instructions, videos, automatic temperature adjustments, and more that help make cooking more of an exact science. It features Alexa and Google Assistant capability, too, to make meals even more hands-off.
How does the Joule Oven Pro work?
Cooking can come with a lot of uncertainty — you constantly run the risk of over or undercooking your meal. There's also always a chance that a new experimental recipe will turn into a disaster and you'll end up having to order pizza for dinner instead.
Breville's Joule Oven Pro(opens in a new tab) takes control of that uncertainty with recipes designed specifically for use in the oven. In the app simply select a recipe, hit the start button on your phone, and your Joule convection oven will turn on by itself (with the selected temperature already set). You'll then be guided through step-by-step instructions with both text and video to make the perfect meal. The autopilot function will automatically run your oven through multiple cooking functions and temperature settings, and you'll get notifications to your phone when the food is done.
Aside from the smart features, the Joule oven has identical hardware and cooking functions to its less-smart sister oven, the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro(opens in a new tab). It's super similar to one of our other favorite air fryer ovens too — the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer(opens in a new tab) — which has similar hardware and functions but lacks dedicated settings for proofing and dehydrating.
Either of these options would be good cheaper alternatives if you're looking for an all-in-one toaster oven/air fryer but don't feel called to use the recipes and auto temperature control functions of the Joule Oven. Using these ovens manually does have more of a learning curve than using the Joule though, for comparison.
Testing the Joule Oven Pro
The Breville Joule Oven app(opens in a new tab) has streamlined the recipe-following process so much, I think every cooking app should follow in its footsteps. Each recipe shows a full breakdown of ingredients, equipment needed, cooking plan, and instructions broken down into steps.
I made a few recipes in the Joule Oven during testing, but we'll use this New York Times Cooking recipe for chicken thighs with garlicky cucumber yogurt as our main example. When I started the recipe, I was able to preheat the oven from my app before getting a look at all the steps.
Each step can be clicked on and expanded to show an instructional video that gives you a better picture of what you're supposed to be doing (ideal for visual learners). The app gives you a good idea of exactly what's happening to your food through the cooking process, in the form of pop-ups and phone notifications.
In all, the prep took me even less time than the recipe said it would. Not only was each step easy to follow, the app also gave me efficient instructions, so I was able to multitask. While the chicken was cooking, I made the yogurt sauce, and when that was done, I just relaxed until everything was cooked.
I was genuinely surprised at how accurate the cooking times were for each recipe in the Joule Oven app. Even when cooking meat, the temperature and cooking times were always exactly correct, and I never once had over or undercooked food.
My biggest qualm with this oven (similar to my biggest issue with the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer(opens in a new tab)) is that it's hard to clean. The heating elements are exposed, which makes it easy for grease and other food splatters to get on them. The interior isn't exactly nonstick, so even if you wipe down the oven every time immediately after use, you'll still have some grease splatters that need some serious, heavy duty elbow grease to get off.
Additionally, none of the accessories the oven comes with are dishwasher-safe, which is kind of a bummer for a $500 oven.
Can the Joule Oven be used manually?
The Joule Oven acts exactly the same as the Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro(opens in a new tab) when used manually. You can pick from one of these 13 settings to do your cooking: toast, bagel, bake, air fry, broil, roast, pizza, cookies, proof, reheat, slow cook, keep warm, and dehydrate.
The manual settings take some playing around with to get the perfect cook, since you'll have to decide between so many different cooking types and temperature settings every time you want to cook. Of course, if you don't want to figure out how long and at what temperature to cook, you can always find a recipe in the Joule Oven app and use the settings it suggests.
Breville Joule Oven recipes
So far, the Joule Oven app has recipes from Breville, ChefSteps, the Williams Sonoma test kitchen, and New York Times Cooking staff. Breville plans to add even more recipes from popular recipe developers, restaurants, and chefs in the coming months as well.
Recipes can easily be filtered in the app by meal, protein, diet, cooking time, and more. There are tons of curated recipe collections to look through as well, so you can find exactly what you want to make.
Is the Joule Oven Pro worth it?
If you're already a good cook or simply don't mind following a recipe normally, you don't need the Joule Oven Pro. After testing, we think this appliance would be worth it for folks who don't know how to cook or who want to broaden their kitchen skills in an easy and accessible way. We also recommend it for busy families who need help figuring out what to eat and want to get dinner on the table faster.
I can also see the Joule Oven Pro(opens in a new tab) being a good gift for a college student in their first apartment or a recent grad who needs to cut back on the takeout and start cooking for themselves.
