Ninja Speedi Review

Now that air fryers are becoming commonplace, the market has gotten a taste for countertop appliances that can do it all. Ninja Speedi is a multi-use appliance that aims to put your oven, stovetop, barbeque, sous vide, and air fryer into retirement, since this is a high-powered device that brings all of your kitchen tasks to one place and claims to be able to do it all. In this review we’ll look at what the device promises, what you get, how it performs when it comes to those cooking tasks and if we can recommend it for you.

What’s in the box + Set up

The Ninja Speedi comes with the unit itself, a 6-quart non-stick cooking pot, a crisper tray, instructions, and a cooking guide. The Speedi unit itself is fairly heavy, but they’ve wisely added a handle at the unit’s base to help you carry it. The box is sizeable, as the unit itself measures 35.81 cm L x 35.05 cm W x 31.5 cm H. 

Before using, you’ll need to remove the insert for the cooking pot and wash the pot, tray, and evaporation collector trap in warm, soapy water. Once that’s done, you’re ready to cook.

What is Ninja Speedi?

The claim to fame of the Ninja Speedi fryer is that it can take the place of a lot of your kitchen appliances, and that it cooks an entire meal at once, even if different cooking methods are needed.  Dubbed a ’12-in-one’ appliance, it will:

• Steam & Crisp
• Steam & Bake
• Steamonly
• Proof (in Rapid Cooker mode)
• Air Fry
• Bake
• Roast
• Air Broil
• Dehydrate
• Sear & Saute
• Slow Cook
• and Sous Vide

The lid on the unit is relatively heavy, and as it is hinged on the left, you’ll need to find space on your counter where you can open the lid fully to that side. The Speedi itself is pretty large, and with the lid at full open, it’s close to 60 cm tall. Unless you have much higher cabinets than me, you’ll need to pull the unit out from under them to use it. On that note, the Ninja Speedi cooker is a big appliance, something to take into consideration if you have a small kitchen with little counter space. This isn’t something that you’ll tuck away on the counter and work around easily. 

The crisper tray is square, with small legs in the corners that can be snapped into place to raise the tray up close to the element (in the bottom of the lid) or snapped under to lower the tray to the bottom of the six-quart pot for air frying. The six-quart pot has indentations near the top and the bottom to house the feet of the crisper tray, and it also has measurement markings along its interior side.

Controls

There is a small panel on the front with all of the controls for the Ninja Speedi, apart from the Rapid Cooker/Air Fry switch on the top. The power switch, temperature controls, time controls, and Start/Stop button are housed in the top row, along with a readout that shows the time or temperature. The temperature settings are predetermined, so you might be unable to choose the exact temperature you wish, though you can usually find one close to what you’re after.

Below are two buttons for cycling through the different modes, half of which are lit up at any time (more on this later). 

Cooking modes: Air Fry or Rapid Cook

The Speedi boasts ten different modes for cooking, divided into two separate groupings. The first is the Rapid Cooker grouping, which can be set by flipping the switch on the top of the unit to the left. This allows you to access most of the steam-related modes: Steam, Steam & Crisp, Steam & Bake, and Speedi Meals.

The other half of the modes fall in the Air Fry category, set by flipping the top switch to the right. Those modes are Air Fry, Bake/Roast, Broil, Sear/Saute, Slowcook, and Sous Vide. 

Interestingly, the instruction manual that came with my review model shows both a Dehydrator and Proof mode and walks you through using these. My unit didn’t have either of those modes, a fact I learned halfway through Speedi’s Pretzel Bite recipe. I improvised by heating the Speedi up a bit and letting the dough proof in the chamber. 

Speedi-Meals: is cooking a complete meal really possible?

The recipe booklet that comes with the Ninja Speedi REALLY pushes the concept of Speedi-Meals. There’s a two-page spread of a variety of Speedi-Meals, and more in-depth instructions to create them. This is understandable, as the concept shows off what the Speedi is best at.

 At its most basic, the theory is that you can steam vegetables or starches in the bottom of the six-quart pot while grilling/broiling the protein on the raised crisper tray. Once you set the Speedi to Rapid Cooker/Speedi-Meal mode and select the temperature, the unit will build up steam, then begin your countdown. 

When the timer goes off, everything is ready. Depending on which Speedi-Meal you’ve chosen, move the contents to a bowl and add the non-cooked ingredients (nuts, seeds, uncooked veggies) and a sauce. 

How well does Ninja Speedi cook?

I tried out the Speedi-Meal Chicken with Mac and Cheese recipe. This is not a ‘made-from-scratch’ recipe; it calls for frozen chicken strips and boxed mac and cheese (so, basically Kraft Dinner) but it promises to cook it all inside the Speedi. This is a tantalizing prospect, since it means not needing to use two appliances (oven and stove) and dirtying two sets of cooking implements (baking sheet and pot, tongs and spoons etc).

I made this recipe by adding water to the pot, pouring in the Macaroni and cheese ingredients, and then placing the crisper tray in the upper position. Full confession, I used chicken thigh rather than the suggested frozen chicken strips since I was out of those.

When the timer went off, I found that the mac and cheese (boxed, as recommended) was underdone. The recipe seemed to suggest too little water in the bottom, so my interpretation here is some of the noodles were undercooked. The chicken thighs, on the other hand, were a bit overdone. Despite this, the meal was ready in about 20 minutes and still pretty tasty. 

I tried again with chicken thigh and rice in the bottom, using the suggested amounts, dropping the temperature a bit, and adding more water. This time, the chicken was still overdone, and the rice still had some water left. I pulled the chicken out and gave the rice a couple of minutes more, and it was perfect. I suspect most people will go through a similar process while figuring out the correct temperatures to set for various meals.

My honest thoughts about Ninja Speedi

Trouble is, I never felt like I was in control of the heat or the doneness of my food. It all felt a bit, “hit the button and hope.”  This might be the perfect thing for you if you’re not a big fan of fussing over your food during cooking.

You can stop the cooking process simply by lifting the lid, and the Speedi will resume where it left off when you close it again.

If I have one big complaint about the Speedi, it’s the crisper tray. It has a lot of holes in it but no handle. While I understand that the holes are needed for air-frying, they create many issues while cooking. When making my two chicken Speedi-Meals, the holes simply allowed all of the grease from the chicken to drip down into the starch. To some extent, this is fine, but you wouldn’t want all of the grease back in your food in every case. 

The second problem is that when making a Speedi-Meal, you’ll need to remove the crisper tray to get to the starch or veg, which is trickier than it should be. Unlike many air fryers with handles, the Speedi has only a small hole in the center to grab with tongs. Then you’ll need to move it upwards and place it on something (as it’s generally very hot). To remove the pot, you’ll need either really solid tongs or an oven mitt. It’s just a bit more cumbersome and effort-filled than you’d expect. If you have kids who will be using the Speedi, you’ll need to be extremely careful, as there is a decent potential for them to burn themselves on the exposed element in the lid, and the previously mentioned lid issue is also a concern.

How to clean Ninja Speedi

Cleaning up, on the other hand, is a snap. Both the crisper tray and the pot are nonstick, and I found them really easy to clean after cooking. Once dried, they pop right back into the Speedi, no muss, no fuss.

Who’s Speedi good for?

If you have a large kitchen with, say, AC power in an island, the Speedi would be perfect there. If you have a really small kitchen, finding a good working space for the Speedi might be challenging. Having said that, a college student or someone with a small apartment might love the idea of buying a single appliance that can perform a lot of different functions, replacing the ubiquitous hot plate with something that can do so much more, without a lot of extra pots, pans and trays needed.  In my opinion Ninja Speedi is for someone who doesn’t have a lot of time too cook, but who wants the ability to bring dinner together fast, whether dinner is healthy steamed rice and fish, or frozen/boxed chicken fingers and mac. Ninja Speedi is also ideal for folks who don’t love washing up a lot of dishes.

Overall review: Ninja Speedi

The Ninja Speedi claims to do a whole lot of things, though not all of them as well as you might want. If you’re after quick and easy, this is an excellent unit for you. You’ll need to use it a lot, as it will take up too much real estate in the kitchen for an occasional-use item. I found, on the whole, that the meals I cooked with the Speedi turned out decently, and it did save a lot of time and fuss. 

 

Ninja Speedi Winner

*Contest is now closed. Congratulations to CM of Calgary on winning the Speedi! * To enter our giveaway of 1 Ninja Speedi, simply post a comment in the comments section BELOW. You will be required to register in order to post a comment.

The Fine Print:

There is one (1) Ninja Speedi device available to be won. We’ll pick one winner at random from among all website entries/comments. The contest is open to residents of Canada until 11:59pm MT Thursday November 24, 2022.

Only 1 entry per person, per day please; excess entries will be discarded. Odds of winning depend on the number of entries received. Not valid in Quebec.

The winner will receive 1 prize. Prize will be shipped direct to the winner by Ninja so winner is required to provide a mailing address. TechGadgetsCanada.com bears no responsibility for prizes not delivered, delayed or misdirected, or not claimed after 30 days, or misdirected due to incorrect address being provided. This prize has no cash value.

We’ll get in touch with the winner via the email address supplied on entry or via website comment registration. Winner must respond to an email naming them as the winner within 48 hours. Non-response within 48 hours means we’ll redraw under same  48 hour timeframe until we get a winner’s response.

Winner’s name(s) will be posted to this web page after the draw.

If for any reason the internet portion of the Contest is not capable of running as planned, including infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, technical failures or any other causes beyond the control of this website which corrupt or affect the administration, security, fairness, integrity or proper conduct of this Contest, TechGadgetsCanada.com reserves the right at its sole discretion to disqualify any individual who tampers with the entry process, and to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the Contest. Prize may not be exactly as show in accompanying photographs.

By entering this contest you agree you have read and accept the rules and are to abide by them.

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