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I tried really hard to not make this sound like an ad. It’s just an honest review of one of the coolest kitchen devices we own.

The grill I bought for my wife, then bought three more

Cooking shows lied to you.

Not on purpose, maybe. But every tutorial you watched growing up taught you what to make, not how to actually feed yourself. The ingredients list always had something you’d never heard of and would never buy again. The technique required either a culinary degree or a willingness to fail in front of your family. And the whole thing took an hour, minimum, not counting cleanup.

Nobody told you that you could just cook meat on a hot surface and eat it.

That’s the whole secret. That’s what they were hiding under the Himalayan sea salt and the herb-infused compound butter. Real food doesn’t need a recipe. It needs heat and a few minutes.

Why I bought this thing

I wanted my wife to be able to grill. The outdoor setup we have is a Masterbuilt gravity-fed charcoal grill. It’s genuinely one of the easiest and coolest charcoal grills you can buy. Assuming the weather is nice, you need to check the hopper, plug it in, empty the drip pan, light the coals, clean the grate, wait for it to come to temp, and keep an eye on flare-ups. That’s not hard, but it’s also not nothing.

The Ninja Foodi indoor grill is a much simpler setup. You put the meat on. You stick the built-in thermometer into it. You press “pork” or “steak” or whatever you’re cooking. You wait. It tells you when it’s done.

That’s it. That’s the whole interface.

What it does

An entire grilled meal takes six to ten minutes. Everything from your protein, bread, and vegetables. The idea is to set the timer and temp for whatever takes the longest, put everything on at once, and pull items as they finish. Put on carne asada at high for six minutes, pull the bread off at ninety seconds, the veggies at three, and the steak when the timer finishes. The steak comes out with a crust on it and medium inside. An entire meal tracked with one timer.

BLTs are my other go-to. Not exactly healthy, but it’s my favorite sandwich that I refer to as “God’s food”. The Foodi handles the bacon on air fry at 350 for seven minutes and the bread at max for ninety seconds. No toaster, no pan, no second device, no extra bullshit.

It grills and air fries. Between those two modes it covers most of what you’d actually cook. Thawed proteins, frozen pizzas, bread, vegetables, chicken nuggets, corn tortillas, pork chops. All of it.

Kitchen space

I hate clutter. If something is on my counter, it has to do more than one thing and it needs to be used every day. Otherwise it goes in a cabinet. Right now I have three things out: the Foodi, a Ninja blender that doubles as a food processor, and an Instant Pot. The Foodi grills and air fries. The blender handles smoothies, chopping, and sauces. The Instant Pot does slow cooking, steaming, and sauteing. Three devices does most everything.

The Foodi also has a dehydrator and bake and broil modes. I haven’t touched them. The grill and air fry alone justify the space. Maybe I’ll give dehydrated bananas another try one day.

Why Ninja?

I don’t do brand loyalty. But Ninja keeps making things that work, and at some point that becomes obvious. I replaced my main frying pan with a Ninja pan. It’s the only pan I use now. My old blender got replaced with a Ninja blender and it runs daily. We have the Ninja ice cream maker for homemade sorbet when we want it and it works incredibly well.

When I was confident enough in the Foodi to recommend it, I bought one for my office kitchen, one for my brother, and one for my mom. My family can’t stop talking about how amazing this thing is.

Times

Final thoughts

You don’t need an Iron Chef recipe to feed your family. You need a hot surface and something to put on it.

Next we’ll have a conversation around meal-prepping with a food processor and silicon freezer cubes. It made me fall in love with cooking again.