Ninja Foodi

I said I wasn’t getting any more gadgets but . . I can justify this purchase. Of course I can!! 🙂

I was telling Vince last week that I love watching Louise’s cooking videos at The Salted Pepper. That’s her website but she has a youtube channel.

He watched a couple with me and we had this conversation:

Vince: Do you have one of those?
Me: No. I’d like to but they’re close to $300. Some are more.

Later, Vince said they were on sale at Amazon so I looked, did a little research and ended up with the OL501 Ninja Foodi 6.5 quart. I checked this morning and they’re still on sale but, check before you buy one.

There are many models. I went back and watched several of Louise from The Salted Pepper’s videos and she said that she’s 5’2″ and the 8 quart models are high enough that it’s harder for her to reach in and stir things without burning herself. Also, there are just the two of them so the 6.5 quart size will make plenty for them. One point she made is that, since you can “layer” food (have meat cooking in the bottom, a pan of potatoes cooking above the meat and a pan of broccoli cooking above the potatoes), with the 8 quart, you can add two extra pans but with the 6.5 quart, you can only add one extra pan. We almost always have a meat, a vegetable and a salad. If I feel like I need a second vegetable, there’s always the Instant Pot or the stove.

I knew that I wanted to be able to pressure cook, steam & crisp and air fry. I’ve watched Louise use it as a slow cooker and that was nice and I think I’ll use the dehydrator and proof features. I want to try the sous vide feature too. Maybe I’ll cook steaks before the new diet experiment begins.

It was supposed to arrive today but it arrived yesterday so I hurried up and made something for our dinner. I made Louise’s Cottage Pie. I did a few things differently from what she did because I was in a hurry. I needed to have dinner on the table within about 30 minutes of the pot arriving. I didn’t use roasted garlic – just plain garlic but I know it would be WAY better with roasted and I will do that next time. I didn’t cook the potatoes in the pot (pressure). I cooked them in a pot on the stove. That was quicker . . while the potatoes were cooking, I was sauteing the ground beef in the Foodi and chopping the onions and carrots.

This recipe could have been cooked on the stove or in an Instant Pot. I do feel like, with the solar panels, it costs less for me to use an electric device vs. propane. Also, If I had made it on the stove, I would have used a cast iron skillet, spread the mashed potatoes on top, added the cheese and stuck it in the oven to melt the cheese. The oven takes about 10 minutes to preheat and then about 5 minutes to melt the cheese and brown the potatoes. I was able to brown the potatoes and melt the cheese right in the Foodi.

While I obviously haven’t tried all these settings, it supposedly has 14 programmable functions:

• Pressure Cook
• Steam & Crisp
• Steam & Bake
• Broil
• Air Fry
• Bake/Roast
• Dehydrate
• Sear/Saute
• Sous Vide
• Yogurt
• Slow Cook
• Keep Warm
• Proof
• Steam

I have a lot to learn but I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

By the way, the Cottage Pie was delicious! I’ll probably make it again in a couple of weeks and roast some garlic to use. I think that would make a huge difference. I’ll make it with ground turkey in order to stay on my “no mammal products” diet.

We heated up leftovers of the Cottage Pie last night and I think it was even better the second time. That’s a great recipe that could easily be made on the stove.