Expert rating
Benefits
- Multifunctional kitchen
- Full smoker
- High temperature roasting at 370°C/700°F
- Stone to make a pizza
The inconvenients
- Limited capacity
- Requires preheating
- Can be expensive with accessories
Our Verdict
Time, weather, and maintenance can deter cooking outdoors, but Ninja’s wood-fired electric outdoor oven effectively eliminates these barriers. Its programs make it simple to create brilliant results, while the fact that it’s electric means there’s no monitoring to check that a flame hasn’t been extinguished. For what it offers, it’s quite affordable: although once you install practical accessories, like a stand and a cover, its cost increases.
Best prices today: Ninja Woodfire electric outdoor oven
$349.99
There’s a reason we love cooking outside: the ability to enjoy high heat without worrying about a little smoke means you can prepare flavorful dishes that your indoor oven can’t.
Yet while cooler days often herald the end of barbecue season, the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Electric Oven has been designed so you can continue to enjoy your favorite foods all year round. Functioning as a pizza oven, high-temperature roaster and barbecue smoker, it’s a simple plug-and-play appliance, producing succulent meats, artisan pizzas and even brownies, all with a smoky taste in option.
Design and build
- 38x45x54cm/ 15×17.7×21 inches
- Wood pellets for a smoky flavor
- Maximum temperature of 370°C/ 400°F
The Woodfire outdoor electric oven has a lot in common with your indoor oven: a spring-loaded drop-down door with a long handle on top, a metal casing, dials and buttons to set the time and temperature and inside , elements at the top and bottom. However, the differences are significant. For starters, it’s smaller: just 38 cm high (15 inches), with a width of 45 cm (17.7 inches) and a depth of 54 cm (21 inches), giving it a compact cavity at ‘interior.
It’s also portable, although at 22 kg (48.5 lbs) you may not want to move it as often. It sits on two large black plastic legs, front and back, although it’s advisable to elevate it on a heat-resistant table or invest in Ninja’s height-adjustable stand for more of practicality.
As an outdoor oven, it can generate higher temperatures, with a range of up to 370°C/ 400°F, but temperatures as low as 40°C/ 100°F for dehydration.
However, it’s the smoker that makes the biggest difference: placed on one side, it can be filled with wood pellets which are ignited to give a smoky flavor rather than heat. Not only does this mean you can easily swap flavors, but one packet of pellets will be enough for multiple cooking sessions.
Rachel Ogden / Foundry
Performance and Features
- 8 cooking modes
- Adjustable time and temperature
- Maximum cooking size 3 kg
Like many Ninja small appliances, it’s the programs on the Woodfire Outdoor Electric Oven that are a game-changer. There are eight functions to choose from, including pizza (divided into options such as calzone, thin crust and deep pan), two roast functions for smaller cuts and larger joints, bake, smoke, dehydrate and even a to keep food warm. Each has a preset, but also the ability to toggle in terms of time and temperature, so you can adjust it depending on what you’re cooking.
Rachel Ogden / Foundry
There are many tips for programs, as well as recipes, but it can still be difficult to define at first. For example, it’s easy to confuse maximum roast and gourmet roast if you flip through recipe book pages and cooking tables. It would be helpful to have an option for a whole chicken or roast beef, rather than trying to remember which program is best. Fortunately, the time and temperature can be adjusted once the device starts, so even if you’ve chosen a setting incorrectly, it’s easy to fix.
The space inside isn’t huge – you wouldn’t be able to fit your Christmas turkey in there – but it should be enough for most meats, fish and poultry: the maximum size for a chicken is 3kg. The bird we roasted was a little over this size, meaning its legs brushed against the top element as it went in. We chose the Gourmet Roast program: a two-stage automatic setting that used a short burst of high heat to sear the skin before dropping it into a lower heat to thoroughly cook the chicken, while using wood pellets to a smoky flavor.
It preheated in about 5 minutes, and once we added the chicken and set it to start cooking, all we had to do was wait for it to finish. Halfway through, we checked on his progress. Opening the door releases a huge amount of smoke and steam. So it’s worth taking a step back before taking a look at your food. The finished chicken was beautifully roasted: tender, with a delicious smoky flavor, golden brown skin with grill marks, and cooked perfectly.
Rachel Ogden / Foundry
The oven comes with various accessories: a plate with a roasting rack, which we used for the chicken, as well as a pizza stone (31 x 32 cm). It’s large enough to comfortably fit a 12-inch pizza, although the oven doesn’t come with a peel. The pizza stone heated up in 10 minutes and we baked identical pizzas using different options on the pizza setting: an Artisan and a thin crust.
Rachel Ogden / Foundry
The first was a quick setting at high temperature, the second was a slower cooking at a lower temperature. We had more success with the latter – this happened with the cheese melted and nicely browned on top and around the crust, while the Artisan had burnt around the edges, suggesting less was needed. cooking time.
Rachel Ogden / Foundry
Cleanup was pretty minimal: the pizza stone only needed a scraping, and the rack and accessory frame are dishwasher safe. This meant that the only part that required hand washing was the tray.
Pricing and availability
In the UK, the Ninja Woodfire Electric Outdoor Oven is priced at £349.99 and is available for this sum from John Lewis or directly from Ninja. At the time of writing the price is £399 on Amazon.
Buy it with Ninja’s stand and cover, however, and the price rises to £529.97.
If you’re based in the US, you can buy the oven for $399.99 at Ninja, but there are better deals at Walmart and Best Buy, where you can save $50, and Amazon, where you can get 30% off. discount for a limited time. The pack with stand and cover costs $499.99 at Ninja.
The oven itself is by no means a cheap cooking option, but compared to a dedicated outdoor pizza oven – and considering its versatility – it’s well priced. But if you’re looking for an outdoor electric oven that will impart a smoky flavor to food, take a look at the more budget-friendly Ninja Woodfire Electric Grill and Smoker.
Should you buy the Ninja Electric Outdoor Oven?
For anyone who has difficulty using a pizza oven or barbecue without a temperature gauge (or even with one), the type of precision cooking that the Woodfire Outdoor Electric Oven offers is sure to appeal. You will no longer have to worry about burning or undercooking food, or the inconvenience of lighting and monitoring a flame.
Compared to some pizza ovens and barbecues, it is more user-friendly, more convenient and you don’t need to make sure you have fuel on hand. This produces great results, and perhaps more importantly, consistently.
This is not an appliance for barbecue purists and pizza making enthusiasts, who will lack a visible flame and the skill to cook with a visible flame, but for everyone else, the outdoor electric fire oven Ninja wood means you won’t have to wait until summer for delicious smoked dishes. flavors and homemade pizzas.
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