Air fryer, slushie maker, meals processor, two blenders … is my Ninja kitchen equipment behavior uncontrolled? | Food

I have an issue. It has spanned a few years, price me a whole lot of kilos and earned the derision – and concern – of family and friends. Don’t fear: it isn’t something sordid but it surely does give me an absurd variety of methods to prepare dinner hen or burn up a bag of potatoes.

My poison is Ninja home equipment. Anyone who walks into my tiny kitchen is shocked by my intensive assortment. My prized trio are the Foodi, the Foodi Max Health Grill and Air Fryer and the Creami, which collectively give me the flexibility to air-fry, grill, sear, roast, pressure-cook, slow-cook, steam and even dehydrate my dinner, and remodel a frozen mishmash of protein powder, yoghurt and sweeteners into an ice-cream-like dessert.

It doesn’t cease there. I additionally personal a Ninja blender, meals processor and hand blender. While much less flashy, they’ve survived my unwise makes an attempt to mince a completely intact topside of beef and switch avocado stones into “detox dust” for an ill-fated “glow-up” smoothie.

I’m removed from the one one who has been taken in by Ninja fever. Global gross sales of its merchandise reached virtually $2.9bn in 2024, a 38% soar from practically $2.1bn the 12 months earlier than. With greater than 50 Ninja kitchen merchandise out there in Britain, the UK is now the second largest marketplace for their maker, the US-based equipment firm SharkNinja. It is a outstanding feat contemplating {that a} decade in the past the model was practically unknown within the UK.

It was the air fryer that modified that, significantly the two-drawer meals crisper, which hit the retailers in 2020. Launching at £179.99 within the UK ($179.99 within the US), it was swiftly stocked in high-street massive hitters together with Argos and John Lewis. It quickly took the UK, and the world, by storm.

In 2023, John Lewis named the Ninja air fryer as certainly one of its “products of the decade”. On Amazon, Ninja’s merchandise dominate the air-fryer bestsellers charts, holding 4 of the highest 5 spots within the UK and the US.

Ninja’s subsequent mega-success was the Creami, which guarantees to show a bath crammed with elements of your selecting right into a creamy, chilly dessert. It launched in 2021 within the US at $179.99 and shortly grew to become a viral hit on social media. By 2022, Ninja claimed it was America’s “No 1 ice-cream maker”, based mostly on gross sales knowledge from market analysis agency NPD Group. On TikTok, the hashtag “#ninjacreami” has 244m views as individuals have flocked to the platform to indicate off their recipes. Strained yoghurt and fruits are frequent choices, however others have opted for extra off-piste creations, together with a baked bean “ice-cream”.

The Ninja Slushi (£349.99 within the UK, $349.99 within the US), which lets you make slushies and cocktails at dwelling, is the model’s newest success, promoting out 15 occasions on its launch within the US. On the again of that hit, SharkNinja was this 12 months named as certainly one of Time Magazine’s high 100 firms, becoming a member of the likes of Netflix and Amazon.

The model has additionally carried out a outstanding job of getting A-listers to plug its merchandise. Kris Jenner’s Instagram featured a sponsored put up of her singing the gadget’s praises. David Beckham is a world model ambassador for Ninja and in a single advert confirmed off a few of his personal culinary quirks – which included utilizing his Ninja Double Stack air fryer (£229.99) to prepare dinner carrots entire, together with the inexperienced tops, and utilizing the Woodfire out of doors oven (£349.99), which triples up as an oven, pizza oven and BBQ smoker, inside his kitchen. Viewers of the movie F1: The Movie, starring Brad Pitt, will see SharkNinja’s product placement all through – from its brand stamped on race automobiles to Ninja devices on present in swanky kitchens.

In an interview with Ad Week in March, SharkNinja CEO Mark Barrocas mentioned the corporate spends a lot of its $700m promoting funds on social media. Influencers play such a robust position in selling the Creami, he mentioned: “We virtually don’t invest any more advertising on [it].” The firm has additionally labored laborious to get its merchandise within the arms of so-called “microinfluencers” who’ve “great, authentic followings with smaller niche groups”. It is, merely, phrase of mouth for the social media age.

But this sort of enterprise depends on innovation. SharkNinja pours cash into analysis and growth, with a funds that rose to $341.3m in 2024, up 37% from 2023. It has a group of greater than 1,100 engineers and designers within the UK, US and China, is usually engaged on 60 merchandise at anyone time and launches about 25 new merchandise a 12 months.

Some of those are higher worth than others, in keeping with Natalie Hitchins, head of dwelling services at Which? “Ninja continues to be a popular brand with customers, and when it comes to air fryers, blenders and multicookers, our testing has found that this is mostly well deserved,” she says. “However, prices can reach more than £300 so it certainly isn’t the cheapest. And if you’re looking for an ice-cream maker or mini-oven, we’ve found that there are other brands that perform better and cost less, so it’s worth looking elsewhere.”

Like me, Rhianne Crozier has a kitchen stuffed with Ninja home equipment. Her love of the model began six years in the past. After she moved into her new dwelling along with her husband, her dad and mom gave her a Ninja air fryer as housewarming present.

Now she owns greater than 10 Ninja devices. They embrace the Creami, Slushi, the Luxe Café espresso machine (£549.99) – a high-end brewer that lets you make espressos, chilly brews and cafe staples similar to lattes and cappuccinos – and the Ninja Speedi multicooker (£229.99), a mixed steamer and air fryer designed for one-pot meals. In complete, she has spent about £2,000 on Ninja merchandise.

The 28-year-old content material creator, who reveals off her dishes on TikTok underneath the identify Home With Rhianne, has two youngsters. “I’ve cooked meals in about 15 minutes. It’s great when you’ve got hungry kids,” she says. “Before I would stay in the kitchen for hours.”

She hasn’t touched her pans or oven in months. “It’s more convenient to just put it in, close it, take it out. They’re easy to clean afterwards too,” she says.

But does the success of Ninja inform us one thing extra uncomfortable about how we dwell at the moment? Pen Vogler, writer of Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain, says “these very speedy innovations” are a part of a client tradition the place “there has to be something new constantly”.

My private journey into Ninja-obsession did begin with want. When I moved into my small flat, it was unfurnished. After shopping for one thing to sleep on (my mattress) and one thing to look at (my TV), cash was too tight to deck out my kitchen with pots, pans and baking trays. Instead, I opted for a Ninja Foodi, which set me again simply over £100. It allowed me to sear, pressure-cook and air-fry my meals with out having to purchase a great deal of additional tools, and it was a lot faster than utilizing the oven. I’m not the one one who struggles for area – one research by the University of Reading discovered that the residing area of the common non-public renter in Britain shrank from 31 sq metres in 1996 to 25 sq metres in 2017; and households are renting increasingly smaller homes as the price of residing soars.

Vogler says that within the Victorian period, residing area was additionally very tight, and cooking devices had been additionally enormously in style. She factors to Charles Dickens, who in his 1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop described a silver “temple” with 4 chambers. In one, an egg was positioned and in one other, some espresso was poured. Raw steak and water had been put in and, after the machine labored its magic, “breakfast was ready”. It is, says Vogler, “like a kind of Victorian air fryer”. A scarcity of residing area means individuals will “try to use what technology they have available to answer the problems of how to cook. What Ninja is doing now is just a continuation of something that has been happening for centuries. Technology comes along and it finds a solution to our domestic problems.”

What began for me as an answer to an area downside quickly grew to become one thing else. I grew to become obsessive about the Ninja model, eagerly following its social media to see what gadget it may deliver out to tempt me with subsequent. Recently, nonetheless, the shine has worn off. While the Slushi has been a sensation, it lacks many issues which have beforehand offered me on the model. Yes, it lets you make slushie drinks and cocktails, however there are main setbacks. It takes no less than half an hour to supply a drink, lacks that “I can see myself using this every day” issue and, most significantly, doesn’t appear to have many well being benefits, as sugar have to be used for many drinks to work within the machine.

“Health is becoming a really important part of our cooking technology,” says Vogler. And Ninja’s success has actually performed on our worries about ultra-processed meals. “There’s a large element of anxiety around industrial food that is sending people back to try to make it for themselves,” says Vogler, which “air fryers and kitchen gadgets will do well from. If people are moving back to cooking, they will always want a fast and easy way to do it.”

Ninja has tailored to 2020s residing, however how have the devices modified us? Before the air fryer, there was the microwave. Both have been accused of tarnishing the culinary arts, however Vogler says a few of our most beloved dishes had been born out of recent kitchen know-how.

For her, the air fryer has an unlikely relative. “Cast iron ovens first came in about 300 years ago. It was a massive new technology and is also when our era of home-baking took off,” she says. It ushered in a few of our favorite dishes, together with eccles desserts and baked tarts.

Judy Joo, TV chef and proprietor of the London-based Korean restaurant Seoul Bird, says kitchen devices may be “great”, however they’ve limits. “Sometimes you just want to cook something the way it was intended,” she says.

That contains with the ability to watch what’s occurring. With Ninja home equipment, significantly the air fryers and multi-cookers, you find yourself shoving one thing in a draw or sealing a lid. For Joo, visibility is vital. “You should be able to see food cooking and changing versus something that you say goodbye to and open up the door once it’s ready,” she says. “You lose control of the cooking process.”

And, she says, air fryers won’t ever totally replicate one thing deep-fried, like hen. “It’s a compromise,” she says. “You don’t get things as crispy. It’s crispy-ish, but it’s definitely not the same. You could tell the difference 100%.”

For her, nothing fairly beats the kitchen classics, significantly the satisfaction of “getting out a regular pot or pan, drizzling oil, hearing the sizzle and cracking an egg”. The humble frying pan is far more versatile than it’s given credit score for, contemplating you possibly can “glaze, simmer and saute” in it, she says. “You can’t deglaze in an air fryer.”