A glass act
By Ian Knott
If you’ve already got an air fryer, the obvious question is why you’d want another one. It’s a fair question because that’s exactly where we found ourselves. Our Ninja Foodi XXXL Flex Drawer still gets used regularly, yet somehow the Ninja Crispi Pro 6-in-1 has earned its own place alongside it rather than replacing it.
We regularly have protein cooking in one while vegetables or chips are in the other, and somewhere along the way the main oven has become almost redundant. That wasn’t the role I imagined the Crispi Pro would fill, but it’s how it has naturally settled into our kitchen.
Ninja has kept the controls refreshingly simple. There aren’t layers of menus or endless presets to scroll through, just the functions you actually need. Within a couple of meals I found myself operating it without really thinking about it, which is probably the best compliment you can pay any kitchen appliance. Good design shouldn’t require a manual every time you use it.
Although it’s marketed as a large-capacity air fryer, don’t picture something enormous dominating your bench. It’s certainly larger than plenty of air fryers on the market, but it isn’t the behemoth I was expecting. A whole roast chicken will fit inside, although only just. The glass dish looks deceptively deep, but once the crisping plate is in place, which is essential for airflow underneath the food, you lose around a centimetre of usable height. It doesn’t sound like much until the top of your chicken starts getting a little too friendly with the heating element.
After the first roast, it’s something you naturally work around rather than worry about.
The cooking results are excellent. Oven fries come out noticeably crispier than they ever have in our Foodi XXXL Flex Drawer, and they seem to do it in less time. Pork crackling has become something of a speciality too. The Crispi Pro produces beautifully blistered crackling remarkably quickly, and after a couple of attempts it became one of those dishes that suddenly seemed far less intimidating to cook.
Cleaning is almost suspiciously easy. The glass dishes wipe clean with very little effort and, unlike a traditional air fryer basket, you can actually see every surface. There’s no peering into dark corners wondering whether that baked-on cheese is still there or just casting a shadow.
The glass cooking dishes ended up being one of my favourite parts of the whole system, and not because they’re made of glass. Lift one straight out of the air fryer, place it on the table and it becomes the serving dish. Food stays warm for longer, it looks surprisingly smart, and when dinner’s over the supplied lid clips straight on so leftovers can go into the fridge without creating another pile of dishes to wash. It’s such a simple idea that you wonder why more manufacturers haven’t done it.
Using the two different dishes takes a little practice. The larger one drops in and out easily enough, but the shallower dish needs the adjustable support plate repositioned before you can use it. Lowering that plate again afterwards is probably the least elegant part of the whole design and took me a few attempts before it stopped feeling slightly awkward. It’s hardly difficult, just a little more fiddly than the rest of the appliance.
One thing I would never become complacent about is the temperature of those dishes. They get seriously hot. Because they look more like serving bowls than cookware, it’s easy to underestimate just how much heat they’re retain, particularly if younger hands are wandering around the kitchen. It’s not a design fault, just something worth remembering.
Ninja also deserves some credit for making the Crispi Pro something you actually don’t mind leaving on display. The different colourways lift it above the sea of anonymous black kitchen appliances, giving it a much softer, more contemporary look. Ours has stayed on the bench from the day it arrived, partly because it’s used so often and partly because it actually looks like it belongs there.
The Crispi Pro hasn’t replaced our older Ninja air fryer, and I don’t think it was ever going to. Instead, it has quietly changed the way we cook. Having two capable air fryers running side by side has meant the oven now spends far more time switched off than switched on, meals are often ready sooner, and we’re using less power in the process.
That’s probably the biggest surprise of all. I thought I was adding another appliance to the kitchen. Instead, I ended up changing the way the kitchen works.
