The cooks-almost-anything kitchen gadget that’ll save you 40% more than your conventional oven

Cometh the cost of living crisis, cometh electricals designed to save you money. Since the price cap rise, according to uSwitch running a traditional convection oven cost 65p per week meaning air fryers, microwaves and smaller counter-top ovens have been selling like… well, hot cakes, mainly because they claim to use less power to give you hot dinners. The Ninja Foodi MAX 9-in1 Multi-Cooker is no exception. While it employs a number of different techniques to cook, tests show that using the air frying function to cook sausages can save 40% on your electricity out-goings. 

The digital interface is super intuitive. Select the function, temperature and time and you’re ready to crisp, bake, roast, grill or sauté. With a quick pre-heat, faster-than-convection cooking times and non-stick accessories that you can wang straight in the dishwasher, I’m with the other John Lewis reviewers who’ve barely used their existing oven since. 

Chips do indeed come out crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. Don’t expect hand-cut, triple-cooked-in-goose-fat quality, it’s not a miracle worker, but it’ll next-level your oven chips and crisp up meats such as chicken like a dream. Plus you can easily move from one function to another, so for example I air fried some sausages, poured on some yorkshire pudding batter and then switched to baking mode to make a weapons-grade delicious toad in the hole.

In fact, friends, it’s so effortless and cheap to use, I’m not just next-levelling week night suppers, I’m much more inclined to treat myself to a hot WFH meal or properly re-heat leftovers for lunch to restore their crispiness (something you can’t do in a microwave).

To pressure cook, steam, slow cook or sauté, you flip up the crisping lid and twist on the separate pressure lid. For everything but pressure cooking you vent the lid, and it works much like a conventional slow cooker, quietly bubbling away and cooking everything to moist perfection.

With pressure cooking, this is where things get, ahem, interesting. My previous experience comes courtesy of my dad’s boyhood pal Chas who decided to furnish him with a fishpond by filling an old pressure cooker with explosives and lighting it. But childhood trauma aside, I’m game for a challenge, so I read the manuals back to front, watched a few YouTube videos then set about pressure cooking a bunch of carrots.

Pressure cooking, so Google tells me, builds up pressurised steam to push the temperature above 100ºC, lowering cooking times and locking in flavour by reducing evaporation.

Building the pressure in the Foodi Max can take as long as 20 minutes depending on what you’re cooking, and I confess on my first trial run, I almost bottled it, but finally managed to hold my nerve for seven minutes as it blinked away letting off occasional puffs of steam to reach full pressurisation. Automatically the timer started to count down – a mere 2.5 minutes of cooking time for the al dente carrots I was hoping for – and once it bleeped I could release the pressure quickly through the valve (Thomas the Tank Engine vibes if steam trains are your thing) and remove the lid.

The carrots, I can attest, were the best my brood have ever tasted, and – not to brag, we consider ourselves carrot connoisseurs. They were good enough, in fact, to wipe away any of my reservations about how anxiety-inducing pressure cooking may be (it really isn’t terrifying once you get the hang of it, promise). 

I realise that once I say this, it can’t be unseen, but the Foodi kind of looks like a huge Dr Who character’s helmet sitting on my counter. In short, it’s not pretty. And you need a significant amount of space to house it. Plus the pressure lid needs to be stored when it’s not in use and that is also a hefty bit of kit. 

But that said, it is easily big enough to cook hearty meals for a family of four and if you can cover the initial outlay of £229.99 and are in the market for a counter top cooker, it will save you money on your electricity bill.

It’s a resounding yes from me. Even if it cost just the same to run as a oven, the reduced cooking time will be saving the pennies. And once I’d got the hang of the pressure cooking function, I realised the Foodi is a cost of living godsend. As I write, I have a stew on ready for a school-night supper using budget-friendly beef cuts. And you know how long it will take? A paltry 25 minutes. Cooking meals through this pinch just became a cinch!