Earlier this week, I visited Ninja’s Double Stack pop-up restaurant, which takes the form of a giant air fryer. The restaurant’s highlight is that the entire menu is cooked in a Ninja Double Stack Air Fryer.
(As I had to leave early and was snuck into the kitchen, I can confirm that the chef team was indeed cooking in a troop of Double Stack air fryers.)
If this immediately sets off alarm bells and you imagine the menu would consist of breaded chicken goujons, chips, etc. that come icy from the freezer and come out golden and crispy, that’s probably a sign that you’re not pulling not getting the most out of your air fryer.
Air Fryers Are Not Fryers At All
The name “air fryer” is actually a marketing gimmick. And it worked, as the countertop stove has become one of the most popular kitchen appliances in recent years.
But this has caused confusion about what they actually do. An air fryer is a mini convection oven, meaning it uses circulating hot air to cook food, just like your oven’s fan setting. But unlike your oven, an air fryer has a compact, non-stick cooking space, making it easier to clean. And it’s much cheaper and faster to cook, because you’re not reheating a giant cavern every time you want to eat.
Almost anything you can cook in your built-in oven, you can cook in an air fryer. Space is probably the biggest limiting factor. At Ninja Restaurant, the chef pointed out that you can even use your air fryer to bake bread from scratch. The device is useful for two stages: raising the dough, then the actual cooking.
Air Fryer Recipes That Go Beyond Beige
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
Emma Rowley / Foundry
In an effort to broaden the appeal of the kitchen appliance, Ninja set the scene with Aperol cocktails garnished with a dehydrated orange slice — dehydrated, of course, in an air fryer. In our Ninja Foodi Max Dual Zone Air Fryer review, Lee Bell also used the cooker to dehydrate orange slices for his Negronis.
And then there was the food. We’ve reproduced the key recipes from the menu below, and you can cook them in whatever air fryer you own (even those that aren’t Ninja Air Fryers), although they are optimized for the Double Stack, which has two stacked cooking zones. (vegetable tray and grill) in each drawer.
Canapés included skins stacked with sour cream, chives and chorizo breadcrumbs, Mexican salmon over hash browns with smashed avocado and blackened corn and tofu karaage over rice. crispy sushi with air fried vegetables and sriracha mayonnaise.
The main course consisted of air fried crispy tender broccoli and soba noodles with tahini satay sauce, crispy chili rayu marinated chicken or eggplant and tofu and cabbage gyoza.
Dessert was double brookies stacked with sweet brittle and traditional oats or crème fraîche. And we can confirm that everything was as good as it sounds.
In the UK, the Ninja Double Stack XL is available from Ninja, John Lewis, Argos, Currys and Amazon, among other retailers, and is priced at £269.99, except at Argos, where it costs a penny more.
In the US, you can buy the DoubleStack XL from Ninja and Amazon for $229.99.
Want to know how much space the Double Stack will save you before you buy? We have the answer.
