Review: Ninja 8-in-1 Woodfire Outdoor Oven

About a month ago, my conventional indoor oven broke. I was not surprised, given that it was built in 1955. But it did present a bit of an inconvenience given that we feed a family of four.

This was less of a disaster than you might expect, because I already had the Ninja oven set up in my backyard. This electric oven has eight functions, and I use it almost every day. Not only have we made pizzas, we’ve also smoked ribs, toasted chicken nuggets, and baked cakes and muffins.

I am shocked at how easy this oven is to use. Granted, it’s not very exciting. It feels a lot more like using a microwave than a conventional oven or smoker—push a button, bleep bloop blop, your food is done. But it’s idiotproof and affordable, and it saved my butt. If you have a small kitchen or limited outdoor space, I recommend it.

Photograph: Ninja

The oven … well, it looks like a tiny outdoor oven. It’s 18 inches wide, 21.5 inches deep, and 15 inches high. It weighs a shockingly light 32.4 pounds, which made it easy even for me to move around to just the right spot in the backyard (next to the electrical outlet).

Ninja sent a proprietary adjustable outdoor stand and attachable side table, which was nice but not necessary, since the oven would’ve fit well on our wooden backyard table. What was necessary, however, were the pans. The oven comes with a roasting pan, a wire rack, and a pizza stone, along with pellet accessories (more on those later).

The cooking area is a nonstandard size, about 12 by 13 inches. This is fine for a pizza oven but not a conventional baking oven. About half of my pans worked. I could fit in a 10-inch cast iron and my 8-inch pans and springforms. But if you want to, say, bake muffins, you have to have Ninja’s proprietary muffin pan. It’s fine! I like the oven enough that I bought the pan, and I’m satisfied with the pan's weight and durability. Still, I feel a pang at abandoning the faithful muffin and mini muffin tins that have served me for so long.

Photograph: Ninja

There’s a dial on the front to pick one of eight cooking modes: Pizza, Max Roast, Specialty Roast, Broil, Bake, Smoker, Dehydrate, and Keep Warm. Once you select Pizza, you can toggle for various styles: Neapolitan, thin crust, pan, New York, frozen, or custom.

I hesitate to actually use the term Neopolitan, since the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana is very strict about all this, and the only home pizza oven that the organization recommends is the Ooni Karu (9/10, WIRED Recommends). It’s convenient that there are presets. It's also reasonable to say that three minutes at 700 degrees is a decent approximation of a cook time for a crisp, delicately leopard-spotted Neapolitan-style pizza.

But as far as a pizza oven goes, the Ninja is a little flawed. It takes well over 20 minutes to preheat to its max of 700 degrees, which is pretty long compared to other electric ovens I’ve tested, like the Ooni Volt (8/10, WIRED Recommends). Other specs are also worse; for example, the Ooni goes up to 850 degrees.

The door is opaque and, by design, requires a lot of force to open. This is great for safety, since I have small children running around my backyard. However, not being able to hover over and watch pizzas baking at 700 degrees means that you will probably end up throwing at least half of them straight into the compost, especially since the oven doesn't retain heat that well. Even the fully automated Breville Pizzaiolo has a window for you to snatch it out if the cheese starts burning.

Over time, I found that it wreaked less havoc on my nerves, wallet, and children's bellies to just ignore the high heat settings. If your primary use case is as an outdoor pizza oven, there are other, better picks.

Photograph: Ninja

The term woodfire is a little misleading, since the only nod to wood-fired cooking is a tiny trap door set in the side of the oven. You use a little scoop to put in some pellets to add a bit of woody smoke to whatever you’re cooking.

If you’re a pellet smoker devotee who prides yourself on your devotion to your craft, then this workaround might make you barf in your mouth a little bit. But the Ninja oven had been in our house for all of three minutes before my husband ran to the store to get a rack of ribs.

My husband loves ribs, and he never gets to make them, because he has a full-time job, two little kids, an elderly dog, a house that’s constantly a mess, and a bespectacled gadget writer wife who is constantly wandering around mumbling, “Did you see where I put the … .” With the Ninja, he seasoned the meat, ran outside and toggled the oven to Smoker, filled the hopper with pellets, pressed Ignite, and set it to smoke for four hours at 250 degrees.

Then he went and mowed the lawn and jumped with his kids on the trampoline. By the time our friends came over, the ribs were ready. The ends were perfectly burnt and crispy, and the meat was falling off the bones.

We used Ninja’s proprietary Robust pellets, which are a mix of hickory, smoke, and cherry. Our backyard smelled awesome, but the meat tasted noticeably less smoky than restaurant ribs; it's not the same as putting meat over a real fire all day. Since we’ve gotten the oven, however, my husband has made ribs many more times. No matter how you slice it (ha!), more ribs is better than zero ribs. Four hours is ideal, but even when we're crunched for time, two hours with a wet sauce gave us a delicious, if a little less crispy, result.

Photograph: Ninja

I’ve been using it to bake. I don’t like baking indoors when the air-conditioner is running (it’s a waste of energy), but with an outdoor electric oven, it’s fine. Preheating to a relatively low 350 degrees takes less than 10 minutes, or just as long as it takes to whip up batter. I can plug in a temperature and time, slide a pan in, walk into my blessedly cool house, and grab it when it’s done. My husband and I have both found the temperatures to be accurate; we haven't had to recalibrate or adjust cook times to accommodate for inaccuracies. Thanks to the Ninja, my kids have been enjoying way more blueberry muffins, peach crisps, and plum tortes than they might otherwise have gotten this late in the summer.

I have my doubts about long-term durability of this oven. Ninja says you can store it outside and sent along a proprietary cover to endure all types of weather; nevertheless, the materials just feel cheaper and thinner than many other ovens I’ve tested. Also, this oven works, but it's not a joyful experience to cook anything that requires high heat and a lot of vigilance.

But for cooking anything that’s set-it-and-forget-it, it’s amazing. On a recent beautiful summer evening, our next-door neighbor had a backyard party with several bands. With a rack of ribs in the Ninja, we were able to walk over, drink a beer, and keep an eye on dinner. When my 6-year-old went back to the party, he brought a chunky rib in his fist to gnaw on while listening to music.

“Did you bring enough of those for all of us?” a guest asked him. No, but just wait another week and we’ll see.