Ninja Crispi Pro reviewed: dinner and a show

Between its multiple modes and its plentiful power, the Ninja Crispi Pro is a clever take on the air fryer that goes beyond what we typically see in that category.

Kids. Convenience. Health. Chips that don’t have to ooze oil. There are plenty of reasons to consider an air fryer, but many of them are right there, the four obvious ones standing out like the oil the appliance is meant to work without.

The concept of an air fryer isn’t complex, but it’s also not technically a fryer. Deep fryers cook with scalding oil, where the results aren’t typically good for you. Meanwhile air fryers use air, heat, and a smidgen of oil (sometimes in the food already or part of the preparation) to cook without all the hot oil. It’s not the same, but the effect can be much the same, even if it doesn’t work for everything.

Deep fryer donuts? Properly a donut. Air fryer donuts? Still good, but clearly not the same because they’ve not been cooked in oil. It’s a little different.

But many other recipes can be near enough for jazz. It’s faster than a deep fryer, better for you than a deep fryer, and less likely to get judgemental views than a deep fryer.

That’s an air fryer. It has reasons to exist, and not everyone needs one. If you don’t plan on frying — air or otherwise — an air fryer might not suit. It just might not matter.

But an oven you need. Baking you need. And occasionally frying you also might need. That’s what Ninja has essentially created with its evolutionary spin on the air fryer.

Armed with a few more skills than simply air frying, the Ninja Crispi Pro is more intriguing because it’s that little bit different. And that counts for a lot.

What is the Ninja Crispi Pro?

A combination between a small fan-forced oven, air fryer, dehydrator of sorts, and a clever approach to cooking in containers, the Ninja Crispi Pro is largely what happens when an appliance maker gets smart about making the air fryer different.

Most air fryers are the aforementioned small fan-forced oven, circulating hot air and oil particles around in a small chamber, and in a way lightly frying things. It’s not a real deep oil fry like your local fast food joint does, but it’s a fry enough for most people, and means you can feel a little better about the chip you’re eager to shove into your mouth.

However, most of the air fryers follow the same pattern: a box with drawer compartments, the air fryer heating and fan element sitting above them, allowing you to pull out the drawer, throw your food in, and cook it quickly.

Ninja’s approach is a little different. The Crispi Pro uses the same principle, but adds a glass container that you can take out, cover, and store in the fridge for later.

It’s the convenience of an air fryer meets the convenience of Tupperware. It may well be the most clever addition to a kitchen we’ve seen in ages.

What does it do?

It’s also an oven, meaning you can cook a chicken or roast anything else just like you would a bigger oven. You can choose to bake chips or air fry them, though the principle between them can be quite similar if you leave the metal plate in place.

You can also opt to dehydrate, running warm air (as opposed to hot, hot air) for a long time, dehydrating fruit and protein over several hours. Think of this as making your own fruit chips or beef jerky, because that’s what’s happening.

There’s an option to prove dough, and also to bake it, handy if you’re making bread or pizza, again using a low heat air to emulate how proving normally works, while baking acts like a conventional oven. And there’s also both a maximum crisp and a “re-crisp” mode, letting you turn up the temperature and fake out the whole frying thing with simply air and oil.

Doing this is happens thanks to a fairly versatile 2050 watt cooking system, which is like having a compact oven able to sit on your kitchen counter in a small appliance that rather looks like a UFO of sorts.

But this isn’t unidentified or even flying, even if it does include an object: to use any of these modes, you need to place the metal shelf in the right spot, locking into one of three places for it to go, and matching up to one of three glass containers designed to match the shelf you’ve just placed.

Each container includes the grooves to slide over that shelf, holding the container and its food in the right place, and essentially locking it in to be cooked.

Two of those containers come with the Crispi Pro — a small 2.3 litre and a large 5.7 litre container — as well as two metal cooking plates and two lids, so you can get cooking ASAP.

Does it do the job?

Grab one of the two class containers the Ninja Crispi Pro arrives with, and something you want to cook, and get stuck in. You’ll want some space around the appliance because it’s all about hot air, expelling forth out the back from the vents, but also radiating from the sides because it’s an oven.

When you pick the container size you’re cooking with, you’ll set the metal shelf which holds the container in place, keeping it firmly under the heating element and fan sitting at the very top of the Crispi Pro.

A heater and fan is largely all this appliance is, but it needs to be held in place with a glass container and metal shelf. The size of your container directly corresponds to where the shelf goes, with Ninja offering three options and also three sizes. You only get two glass containers in the box — big and small — but there’s an optional 3.8 litre container available for the other notch you can use.

Your job is clearly to pick the container size you’re working in, set up the grill plate inside (by simply pushing it in), and then setting up the metal shelf in the Crispi Pro. It is fairly easy, but occasionally can be difficult, something that may occur from excess use.

Once it’s all set up, you simply set up your food, load the container, and then set Ninja’s Crispi Pro to cook using one of the six settings: air fry, max crisp, recrisp, bake, roast, and dehydrate. You clearly have options with this clear cooker.

Preheating isn’t necessarily one of them, as you’re just supposed to throw your food in and start cooking. Fortunately, you can tweak the temperature and time independently, pressing one of the clearly marked buttons while it’s cooking and dialling in the amount to increase or decrease it by, before pressing the dial in with a loud beep.

That sound is pretty much all the notification the Crispi Pro has available to you: it’ll signal when the timer is over and when it’s done, and when perhaps there’s an error, simplistic as it is. There is no app. There is no drama. It’s a sound to let you know what’s going on.

You can use the metal grill plate to fry or take it out to bake. You can throw in a big hunk of meat and let it cooker, and you can give some slightly cool chips a bit of crisp back. It’s a surprisingly useful gadget, adding a little more than frying to your kitchen counter.

Of course, cooking is just one part of the Crispi Pro. The other part is watching the food cook, something you can do thanks to the transparent glass containers.

It’s a little like watching the microwave as it warms and cooks, or even simply standing over the saucepan as it boils. They may say “a watched pot never boils”, but it’s simply not true, and we definitely like to watch things cook.

Whether it’s the gratification of seeing our food come to life or the curiosity of watching it bubble and bake, there’s something about watching the food that makes it more interesting. Plus we can see how it’s going, and pull it out when we need to.

That is exactly what the Crispi Pro is offering: you can watch it fry and bake, and then decide to either turn up the temperature, increase the time, or alternatively pull it out because you’re done. It’s a little like opening the oven, only you have direct access the entire time.

The sides of the holders let you get it out with ease, something you can do with or without gloves; there’s a warning that it could be hot, but the plastic sides tend to be comfortable to hold, even if the glass is toasty.

But being able to see your food cook gives you that extra element of control. It is both entertaining and assisting, and no problem at all.

What does it need?

By comparison the biggest problem with the Crispi Pro is the customisable shelf: it’s clever, but it doesn’t always fit well. Weeks into using the Crispi, it didn’t at all feel like the shelf was connecting properly on anything but the 5.7 litre mode, which is basically a spot at the bottom you can easily push the shelf into.

But in the 2.3 litre — the one you’re mostly likely to use day in and day out — the shelf has to fit into a notch firmly, and then you slide the glass containers over it.

The issue is the shelf can sit a little too low at times, and your container doesn’t always fit.

It’s a problem because the notch isn’t perfect, and sometimes you’ll feel a bit of a struggle to get it all working the way it should. Curiously, this never happens with the big container, the 5.7 litre one, because its shelf just slides in with no dramas. But the smaller ones can be a little more problematic at times.

The good news is that’s the only major niggle with the Ninja Crispi Pro, and it’s the sort of teething issue you can easily live with. It simply means you might need to wiggle the shelf into place at times, or pull your glass containers in and out to make it fit an extra time or two.

It’s easily the sort of thing Ninja can fix in the next version, but even in this one, it’s easy to live with, even if it is a little annoying.

Is it worth your money?

For around $400, we’re not expecting perfection, and more expensive devices certainly have issues, as well.

In terms of air fryers, the price can seem a little high, especially since this technology is fairly commonplace. Granted, lower priced air fryers are typically much smaller, consisting of small drawers inside of a small air fryers.

This is clearly not that appliance because of just how customisable it is. You can change its size rather easily.

But the fact that you’re also getting an oven, dehydrator, and a bit of a show thrown in actually makes the Crispi Pro worth the price of admission. The difference in street pricing also means if you simply look around, you might manage to save a few bucks, as well.

Yay or nay?

Air fryers are one of those things that don’t suit every kitchen. Some people just don’t need them, particularly if they already have a fan forced oven. The two are similar, it’s really just the space they occupy that changes things.

Ninja’s Crispi Pro puts a spin on that by making the air fryer imminently more useful because of what it’s doing.

This is more than just another basic air fryer, because you can prove and bake and roast and dry. It is suddenly much more useful, and you can even monitor your cook, as well. Forget about overcooking something, because like a smart oven, you can simply see how it’s going. Glance at the glass and it will all make sense.

Before this review, this journalist wasn’t sold on the air fryer at all. It still doesn’t make sense in every kitchen, and that is totally fine. But the Ninja Crispi Pro finds a way to make the air fryer much more useful overall, and that wins it extra points.

It’s pricey, but it’s a great take on dinner and a show. Recommended.