Ninja Foodi Max air fryer review: Can you might have an excessive amount of of thing? (Image: NINJA • EXPRESS NEWSPAPERS) This text comprises affiliate links, we may receive a commission on any sales we generate from it. Learn more
Ninja Foodi Max is supremely capable, due to its six cooking modes and two voluminous drawers. Should you’ve got the space, that is the last word air fryer
What we love
- Two Drawers Is Really Flexible
- Up To 9.5L Can Be Cooked
- Crisper Plate Cooks Chips Perfectly
- Sync Manages Timings For You
- Six Different Cooking Modes
- Uses Less Oil Than Deep-Fat Fryers
- Much Cheaper To Run Than An Oven
- Handle Never Gets Hot
What we do not
- No Glass To Check Progress
- Only Available In Black
- Takes Up A Lot Of Space
Ninja has created one of the crucial powerful and versatile air fryers with its superb Foodi Max. The pair of drawers, each large enough to cook a whole chicken, could be used to cook vast amounts of grub for a celebration with family and friends …or cook a smaller variety of ingredients in two different styles.
Should you’re already short on countertop space – avoid the Ninja Foodi Max Air Fryer. It is a bulky piece of kit. And Ninja offers a lot of smaller, single-drawer air fryers that ought to still leave you sufficient room on the sideboard to cut some onions and make a cuppa.
Should you’re trying to lower your expenses in your energy bills, the Foodi Max Air Fryer – sometimes known as AF400UK by retailers – is an excellent alternative. It may cook 9.5-litres, good enough for a family of 4. And every little thing cooked within the air fryer uses 65% less energy than an oven. Except for the initial outlay, which shouldn’t be inconsiderable unless you may secure of the perfect air fryer deals, switching to cooking in an air fryer is an incredible option to shrink your monthly bills.
And the outcomes are mouth-watering. With 6 different cooking options – Max Crisp, Roast, Bake, Reheat, Dehydrate and Air Fry – the Ninja Foodi Max deftly handled reheating leftovers, crisping homemade chips and frozen wedges, roasting cuts of meat, and baking sweet treats. The voluminous drawers could be dropped straight into the dishwasher too, saving you time.
Ninja Foodi Max is an excellent air fryer, with good performance, dual drawers to cook multiple ingredients in several styles or cater for big groups, loads of modes, a bundled cookbook with some recipes to check in your recent kitchen gadget. And all of that while cutting your energy usage. Not bad, eh?
Ninja Foodi Max Air Fryer review
Chances are high, you’ve got heard lots about air fryers. From viral videos revealing recipes for dinners and baked goods that could be prepared and cooked in less time than a typical ITV ad break to their ability to slash your monthly bills …it looks like everyone seems to be talking about the perfect air fryers in the meanwhile.
Should you’re considering of taking the plunge, is the Ninja Foodi Max air fryer (AF400UK) the correct alternative for you?
Well, that depends.
That is an excellent air fryer – the most effective we have ever tested – nevertheless it’s definitely not for everybody. As you would possibly expect from a product branded as “Max”, this air fryer is a beast. Ninja has fitted its flagship fryer with two equal-sized drawers, which provide a combined volume of 9.5-litres.
Each drawer could be set to its own cooking mode, temperature and timer… for extra flexibility (Image: NINJA)
To place that into perspective, you almost certainly only had a 10-litre backpack for your whole textbooks during your school years. In other words: it’s an enormous amount of food. In culinary terms, Ninja says you can expect to cook 1.4kg of chips in each drawer – for a complete of two.8kg between the 2 drawers, that is greater than almost any bag you will find within the frozen aisle of your chosen supermarket.
Ninja also claims that a 2kg chicken that be squeezed into each drawer, nonetheless, in our experience with the Foodi Max, the width of every drawer will determine whether you may actually slot in a whole chicken, slightly than the overall weight of the bird.
While one among the main benefits of this design from Ninja is the twin drawers, they’re heated individually and also you’re under no obligation to make use of each when cooking with the Foodi Max air fryer. In truth, Ninja makes it easy to cook with a single drawer, which has good enough space to quickly crisp some chips to accompany a meal, reheating leftovers, brown some garlic bread or other sides.
Even with a single 4.75-litre drawer, you will find a way to simply cook up sides for 2 or three people. Unlike some air fryers, there is no shelf built into the drawer, so you will not find a way to stack multiple elements in the identical drawer. If you must keep things separated during cooking, you’ll have to dust-off that second drawer.
Ninja doesn’t allow you to stack multiple elements inside a single drawer, so you’ll have to make use of each to cook complicated dishes with the Foodi Max
Ninja – which burst onto the scene with its vaunted Nutribullet smoothie maker in 2013 – has made its Foodi Max air fryer very friendly to newcomers.
Within the box with this flagship kitchen gadget, you will find a bible with cooking times for probably the most common dishes, ingredients, and leftovers. Higher yet, Ninja had included a lot of recipes to showcase what its gadget is really able to. Didn’t know that air fryers could be used to bake cakes or make dessert? Not a difficulty, the Ninja cookbook has a handful of recipes to guide you thru this functionality. Unsure how long you’ll have to cook meat inside an air fryer? Again, no panic. Ninja has a comprehensive table that sells you the mode and timings needed for various cuts of meat.
It’s a extremely useful addition and the kind of thing that sets Ninja aside from the plethora of nondescript air fryer brands stocking the shelves of eBay and Amazon.
The Ninja Foodi Max cooks in the identical way as every other air fryer in the marketplace: circulating hot air across the food, ensuring a crisp finish you’d expect from deep-frying (but without anywhere near as much oil). Ninja claims its Foodi Max fryer reduces the quantity of oil required by 75%. In our time with the air fryer, we found a lot of foods – like frozen chips, cheesy garlic bread, or samosas – didn’t need any oil in any respect to crisp nicely. Nevertheless, for those who’re making homemade chips or roast potatoes, you will need so as to add a healthy splash into the combination to make sure crunch.
Ninja features a removable crisper plate for every drawer, which lifts the food off the underside of the tray to make sure hot air circulates under the food for all-around crisping. Even with the plate inserted into the drawer, you’ll have to repeatedly shake the drawer. With some air fryers, you’ll have to don a pair of oven gloves to do that, but Ninja has designed its drawers so the handle stays cool to the touch throughout the cooking process, even when frying at the best temperatures. That makes using the Foodi Max way more convenient than some competitors.
The Foodi Max has two ingenious modes that’ll ensure your timings are as precise as that of a Michelin-star chef.
The primary, Match, is used when cooking the identical food across each drawers. It should duplicate the settings – temperature, timings, and cooking mode – across each drawers to they’ll finish at the identical time. That is great when catering for big groups of individuals, or for larger families. The second option, Sync, is even higher. With this selection enabled, Ninja will be sure that each drawers finish cooking at the identical time – despite using each drawer for various food, with a special cooking mode, period of time spent cooking, and temperature.
With a faucet of the Sync button, each drawers will finish cooking concurrently (Image: NINJA)
With either of those modes enabled, Ninja will immediately pause the cooking process across each drawers while you remove a single drawer to examine on the progress or shake to make sure level of crispiness. Each drawers will only resume cooking when the drawer is reinserted, so you may guarantee that you’re going to finish cooking at the identical time, when the countdown timer on the front of the machine reaches zero.
With Match or Sync enabled, it’s possible to remove a single drawer without interrupting the opposite.
Ninja offers a complete of six cooking modes: Max Crisp, Roast, Bake, Reheat, Dehydrate and Air Fry. After all, you may customise the temperature for every of those modes, offering an additional layer of flexibility.
Setting each drawers to the identical mode – using the Match button – you may cook huge quantities (Image: NINJA)
Should you’re following cooking instructions on a packet, the final rule of thumb is to subtract 20% from the cooking time and reduce the fan oven temperature by 20ºC to 30ºC. Nevertheless, in our experience with the Ninja Foodi Max, you would possibly have to drop the cooking time by as much as 50%. In our time with this supremely powerful air fryer, rarely did we ever set the timer above 10-minutes. And we never cooked anything longer than 20-minutes.
Coupled with the incontrovertible fact that there is no have to preheat an air fryer and it’s clear why these devices can reduce your monthly electricity bills by such a drastic amount in comparison with using an oven. From reheating leftovers, cooking sides, and baking sweet treats, in our time with the Foodi Max on the countertop, it’s no exaggeration to say that we rarely turned on the oven.
Price and Availability
Ninja Foodi Max is one among the biggest air fryers available within the UK …and as you would possibly expect, which means it has a price tag to match. With an RRP of £229.99, the Ninja Foodi Max – also often known as AF400UK – is not low cost. As such, unless you are sure that you’re going to be repeatedly cooking different foods that require unique cooking modes and timings, you is likely to be higher suited with a smaller, single-drawer air fryer. Ninja is widely stocked by just about all high street and online retailers, so you should not have any issue finding stock of the AF400UK.
Ninja has created an excellent air fryer that may easily replace your oven (Image: NINJA)
Ninja Foodi Max Final Verdict
The Foodi Max air fryer is an incredible piece of kit. Its dual drawer approach means it’s more flexible than its rivals: enabling you to organize foods with polar-opposite cooking instructions at the identical time with no fuss. And the clever Sync mode means you will not need Gordon Ramsay barking orders at you to ensure that every little thing finishes cooking at the exact same time, able to plate up.
Should you’re a busy household, or repeatedly host large groups of friends or family, the 9.5-litre total capability is good enough to cook two whole chickens, industrial quantities of chips, and multiple sides for everybody on the table. Should you’re a pair or smaller family, you would possibly find a way to forgo the oven completely with the Foodi Max air fryer in your countertop. A wide selection of cooking modes means you will find a way to do every little thing you may do in an oven – from reheating leftovers and baking desserts, to cooking entire meals with each drawers.
With so many concerns across the cost-of-living crisis, the efficiency of an air fryer – coupled with the lower cooking temperatures, shorter cooking times, and no have to preheat like an oven – means you can see huge savings by switching to one among these gadgets this winter. After all, there’s the initial outlay to purchase the gadget to think about…
Should you’ve got the space – and the budget – you are going to adore cooking with the Ninja Foodi Max air fryer
But despite our effusive praise, the Ninja Foodi Max probably is not the perfect option for most households.
Why? Well, the cavernous dual drawers included with the Foodi Max means it takes up lots of room in your countertop, so those in smaller apartments will likely should sacrifice all preparation space to make room for his or her recent air fryer. Ninja itself sells a smaller, dual drawer fryer that is likely to be higher fitted to couples or those with smaller kitchens.
Second, Nutribullet maker Ninja is a well-loved and revered brand …nevertheless it is not probably the most inexpensive manufacturer at the perfect of times. Coupled with the incontrovertible fact that’s produced the largest-capacity air fryer currently available within the UK, you will really have to hunt out the perfect air fryer deals to secure the Foodi Max below £200.
In conclusion, for those who’re not going to be repeatedly juggling each drawers, cooking large quantities of food, or want the capability to bypass your oven completely… there are many other air fryers, including from Ninja, that is likely to be higher suited to your needs.
That said, for those who want the flexibleness afforded by the vast cooking capability of the monstrous Foodi Max, the superb construct quality Ninja is thought for, a fairly comprehensive cookbook with recipe ideas and crib sheet with cooking times, loads of modes to suit all dishes, dishwasher-safe drawers and crisper plates for no-mess clean-up, energy efficiency, and a few of the perfect chips you will find outside of your local chippy …the Ninja Foodi Max (AF400UK) is extremely advisable.
Should you’ve got the space (and the budget) you are going to adore cooking with the Foodi Max. This Dual Zone air fryer is a beast – in one of the best ways possible.
