Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven review

When it’s warm outside, the last thing most people want is to power on and generate heat with all their kitchen appliances. The Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven offers a convenient alternative for getting meals on the table. 

The $399 Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven can bake and roast like your indoor oven, but reaching up to 700 degrees on electric power, it’s also a functional pizza oven. Plus a fool-proof smoker box can add complex flavor to anything you’re cooking, similar to the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Grill.

And while the grill is a great starter or add-on to your outdoor kitchen, the Outdoor Oven sets out to replace multiple appliances entirely. It’s still not ideal for making large quantities of food, but during testing for this Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven review, it proved a crowd pleaser at my backyard barbecues.

Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven: Price and availability

The Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven is available now for $399. You can shop it at Best Buy, Home Depot, or directly at Ninja Kitchen.

It comes with the following accessories: pan, roast rack, pizza stone, pellet scoop and an all-purpose blend starter pack of pellets. For the purpose of this review, Ninja sent me additional accessories including the Perforated Pizza Peel ($29.99), the Premium Outdoor Oven Cover ($24.99). Though the oven can withstand rain and snow, Ninja recommends purchasing the cover. As for the peel, unless you intend on only making pan pizzas, a peel is pretty much a must for launching and removing pizzas from the oven.

Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven review: Setup and design

The Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven is one of the easiest outdoor appliances I’ve reviewed in terms of setup. The 21.5 x 8 x 15.1-inch, 32.4-pound unit practically slid out of the box and onto a table on my deck. The most time-consuming part was digging an extension cord out of my garage so that I could connect the oven to power from my outdoor smart plug. The attached cord measures just about 4.5 feet, which I don’t think is long enough to accommodate the sheer variety of outdoor space designs.

Once plugged in, the oven is ready to go. Beneath the pull down oven door is a simple, yet intuitive control panel with all the time and temperature settings, as well as some presets. There’s also a button for “Woodfire Flavor” which basically just initiates the smoke box. Adding smoker pellets is completely optional, but it’s also very approachable for those who’ve never smoked their food before.

Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven review: Performance

Preheating the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven ranges from 10 to 20 minutes depending on what you’re making, with the high-temp pizza settings taking the longest. There are five pizza presets to choose from: Neapolitan, Thin Crust, Pan, New York, and Frozen, with the oven accommodating up to a 12-inch pie. 

I tried both Neapolitan and Thin Crust using store-bought dough and ingredients. At first, I felt hesitant because you can’t watch the pizza’s progress like you can in the best pizza ovens. I trusted the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven to turn around quality bakes, and sure enough, they did. The pizza stone cooked the base through and evenly while mozzarella cheese melted into a perfectly golden brown layer across the top.

I may have opened the door to peek in a few times, but the oven didn’t seem to spill heat. When I stand in front of and beside my standard Ooni Koda 16 oven to crank out pies for a dinner party, I usually end up drenched in sweat. This wasn’t the case for the Ninja oven. However, it can’t crank out pizzas as fast as other dedicated ovens, which can reach temperatures as high as 900 degrees.

Satisfied with my pies, I turned to the Quick Start Guide and Recipe Book for a digestible collection of charts listing basic preparation techniques and cooking times. I used this information to smoke the most amazing batch of garlic parmesan wings I’ve ever made (if not ever tasted) as well as some corn on the cob for my elote dip recipe. 

As a non-smoked option, I roasted chili lime shrimp kabobs, which were devoured within minutes of leaving the oven. For dessert, I baked a basic brownie box mix in a square aluminum pan following the time and temperature instructions — it came out soft and gooey. Through all the dishes, I found that the oven was very forgiving for experimenting with cook times and temperatures.

The key drawback, as you might’ve caught on, is that I could only prepare one item per course at a time. For two people or a small family, a sheet-pan salmon and vegetable meal is totally doable. So is, say, a frittata bake or 5-pound roast chicken. But for a crowd, navigating the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven’s portion restrictions requires a bit of creativity. I still needed to use my Traeger Flatrock for our burgers and steaks. That said, it’s a breeze to bust out a bunch of pizzas, with cooking taking 5 to 7 minutes for fresh pies.

As for cleaning, the pellet scoop, accessory frame and roast rack are all dishwasher-safe. The pan and pizza stone are not; however, ridding the pan of wing grease was surprisingly easy. It’s recommended that you keep your pizza stone away from water, but if you do happen to get it wet, make sure it’s completely dried before using.

Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven review: Verdict

For people who have thought about filing their backyard with cooking appliances, but don’t have the necessary space or budget, the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven offers an all-in-one solution at a fair price. Again, it’s not the only appliance that you need for a dinner party, but it certainly can diversify your menu. The simple pizza-making and smoking settings are safe and approachable for beginners thanks to the electrical power, too. 

I think the real reason to buy the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven, though, is if you want to move more of your food prep outside. It can save you from turning on your indoor oven and your toaster oven, which typically generate residual heat. During the peak of summer, those extra degrees certainly make a difference.