Ninja Speedi

A new kitchen toy – the Ninja Speedi. Do I really need another Ninja multicooker?

To be sure, I already had the Foodi, but I’d read good things about the easy multilayer cooking with the Speedi – i.e. rice, pasta or veg in the bottom, and meat on top, with the crisper plate fitting on two positions. Also, unlike my Foodi, the pan in this is small enough to fit my mini-dishwasher.

Even so, when it came out, I decided not to get it, but a combination of the copper finish and good price (reduced to £149, with a 10% discount on top of that) and I couldn’t resist.

Things the Speedi cannot do that the Foodi can do:

• Pressure Cook.
• Large quantities of food, like when I have gamers around.
• It doesn’t have an integrated temperature probe.

Things the Speedi can do that the Foodi does not do easily:

• Full one pot meals with separate protein, carb and veg.
• Easy to keep clean (fits in my dishwasher).

One thing that I love about the Speedi, that I haven’t seen mentioned in reviews, is it actually has real clicky buttons, instead of the slightly raised laminated touch buttons of the Foodi. No doubt underneath the buttons, there is just a printed circuit layer, just the same, but the real buttons give a much clearer visual and tactile feedback of when you are pushing the button

The Speedi’s big thing is the Speedi Meal. The cooking plate can be placed at the bottom of the pot or halfway up the pot. The position on the bottom is for stuff like air frying and similar. Halfway up the pot can be used in two particular fashions (probably many more) – straight grilling, bringing the food closer to the heat, and Speedi Meals, where usually you will have some kind of carb cooking in water in the base, below the plate, meat or other protein on the plate, being air-fried with added steam, and veg either with the carbs or the protein.

I’ve been skipping around the lack of such a function in the Foodi by cooking the protein in the Foodi, and everything else (veg and microwave rice or noodles) in the microwave. But my first Speedi meal was so simple – sausages on top, boiled/steamed potatoes below, and veg in a foil parcel with the sausages. So I can see me not needing the easy-cook rices and such to complete my meals.

In future, the big Foodi will be mainly relegated to stews and similar – slow cooking or pressure-cooking. Because I already have my Lakeland mini slow cooker, it is possible I’ll only be using it when I have visitors, so it may end up getting stored between uses. I’m going to leave it on the counter, for now, and see how much it gets used; but I’ll always want it for large numbers.

At the same time, I will also be using it more for baking, which – with its steam options – it is very good at.

But for regular meals, it is the time of the Speedi. That earlier sausage meal ended up leaving me with more potatoes than I needed. Tonight I took the cooker leftovers, and threw them in the Speedi, set to air-fry for 12 minutes.