Ninja have a great new gadget for your kitchen and it’s perfect for the times we live in
Not so long ago people hadn’t heard of air fryers, or regarded them with some suspicion even if they had. The cost of living crisis changed all that with households everywhere turning to airfryers to reduce energy bills.
But why just buy an airfryer when you can get a device that does alot more?
The Ninja Speedi 10-in-1 Rapid Cooker is the latest machine from a company that already has a mind-boggling selection of kitchen cook devices. Not only does this one airfry, but it also sautes, slow-cooks, bakes, roasts and even dehydrates.
And then there’s the new Speedi Meal function, claiming to make a full meal for four in 15 minutes.
We got hold of a machine and put it through its paces.
Cook like a Ninja
First though, we had to make room in the kitchen by taking away our Ninja Foodie Grill. We’ve had this device for over five years and it’s been absolutely brilliant. Super reliable and capable.
The Speedi has a smaller worktop footprint than the Grill, but it is taller and can take an average sized roast chicken. It appears more compact though and the lid opens sideways, which can be a bonus in some kitchen layouts. It comes dressed in a very attractive ‘sea salt’ grey with steel trim, all of which makes our old black Ninja now look rather dated.
It’s not all about looks though, is it? We had a quick read of the manual, which comes in two forms, one a basic guide to functions, and the other an actual recipe book specifically designed for the machine and with a meal planner, and started off.
As this machine has the traditional element and fan in the lid, but also an additional hot plate beneath the bowl, it’s important to get the settings right. A simple large lever on the lid makes cook style selection easy – lever down for upper fan powered element and lever up for lower hot plate (yes I know that is a bit counter intuitive).
It’s also easy at first to mistake this large lever for a handle to raise and lower the lid, which we quickly found out that it does not like.
Lever Down
First of all, airfry chips. We used our usual sizes of fresh cut potatoes and a spoonful of oil. The metal ‘trivet’ needs to be in place in the bottom of the machine’s 5.7l cooking bowl, to keep the chips off the bottom and allow the forced hot air to circulate.
A menu on the right illuminates rather sexily for all functions that use the fan exclusively and you select the function you want. The machine chooses the temperature and time based on your selection, but you can override both to use whatever you find to be best for you.
The machine has no indicator when temperature has been reached, but we found that allowing it to run for around four minutes was usually enough for it to get to around 190C.
The chips came out well. You do need to flip them about every five minutes for best results, but this is normal for all airfryers.
We also used the bake/roast function to make a quiche, and then a sponge cake, as well as roast a chicken, all of which, according to our energy meter, used a very small amount of electricity compared to our big oven. We even made a loaf of bread in it, which turned out well and at a fraction of the cost of using the big oven.
Other handy uses were baking a red pepper long enough to loosen the skin, softening tomatoes for pasta, as well as reheating pies and pasties. Unlike a microwave, the Ninja does not make pastry soft. Grilling bacon was a breeze, really crispy results and by lining the bottom with foil, a ten second clean up job.
The slow cooker function worked well, as did the saute function, although the latter is hard to control accurately.
Lever Up
Onto the other cook options, the one that also makes use of the hotplate under the bowl.
The main one, the selling point, is the Speedi Cook function. Basically you put your pasta, rice, quinoa, etc in the bottom with water and vegetables and place the trivet with your protein – meat or fish – up above.
The cooker then cooks the pasta with the bottom element, and grills the protein with the grill element. In theory everything cooks at the same time and all you have to do is serve it up after (approx) fifteen minutes .
Our trials using the exact timings of the useful recipe booklet, also available online via a QR code on the outer box, gave us perfectly cooked protein, but the pasta/rice results though varied as might be expected. We found we needed to change the water quantities and timings slightly to get the best results, but you only need to make a note for next time and you’re done. We made baked salmon with coconut rice and mange tout. Not a great photo but it tasted good
The fact everything came out at once was very handy, and of course there was less washing up (both bowl and trivet are dishwasher safe) and far less energy was used.
Lever up also enables the steam and steam fry functions. Put some water in the bowl, and set the trivet in the low position above the water. When started the machine will boil the water, so steaming veg on the trivet.
With steam fry, and steam bake, after about 20 minutes the machine will switch from steam to the fan element to bake/fry. This creates superbly moist sponges and improves airfry chips enormously. It’s also good for baking things that might otherwise come out a bit tough, such as stuffed squashes.
Verdict
Another good-looking and excellent machine from the ever reliable Ninja. You can treat it as a magic device for people not too keen on cooking, and it does that job very well. Plenty of recipes are available from Ninja, as well as online, to keep you happy.
If you’re a keen cook though then by applying your own knowledge, and customising how you use the controls, it becomes a kitchen tool that does a great many things far better than your hob and oven and uses a lot less energy and time in the process. Just what we need right now.