Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven review: War and Pizza

BTTR is independent, but we may earn money when you purchase through links on our site.

When I reviewed the Ninja Woodfire Grill earlier this year, I argued it is an incredible appliance for home cooks looking to elevate their outdoor cooking game.

The Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven offers that same smokey flavour functionality in an appliance designed for high-temperature cooking.

While the flagship use case is wood-fired pizza, the Outdoor Oven can also be used for roasting meats and vegetables, combining the smoke-flavour to just about anything.

But despite its promised versatility, I’ve discovered an obvious preference for the Woodfire Grill when cooking outside. The oven is harder to clean, takes longer to heat (though does reach much, much higher temperatures) and doesn’t come with a built-in meat thermometer.

Furthermore, I cannot seem to master the art of using the peel to put pizza in the oven. But that’s a “me” problem, not an “appliance” problem.

What is the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven offering?

The Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven comes fully assembled, so it’s a pretty large box to unpack. You’ll need to consider where you want to put it because it is definitely designed to work outdoors, and unlike some other pizza ovens, it requires electricity.

But this isn’t just a pizza oven. It is an 8-in-1 outdoor kitchen appliance, which not only cooks pizza, but also has dedicated settings for Max Roast, Gourmet Roast, Smoker, Bake, Top Heat, Dehydrate and Keep Warm.

I’ll break down some of those settings a bit more a bit later. For now, it’s worth pointing out at this point that like the Woodfire Grill, the Woodfire Outdoor Oven will let you add the smoke flavour on any setting with the press of a single button.

To use the smoke function, you simply add the Ninja smoke pellets into the side of the appliance and hit the smoke function button (unless you’re using the “Smoker” setting, in which case it’s activated automatically).

Ninja supplies everything you need to get started in the box. Along with the oven and the power cable you get a custom sized pizza stone, a specially prepared Pro Heat pan and grill rack, a pizza peel, a sample bag of smoking pellets and a measured pellet scoop. You do need to assemble the pizza peel, but it’s a simple process.

One of the Outdoor Oven’s key differences over the Woodfire Grill is its ability to hit extremely high heats. The oven can cook at temperatures of 370ºC, which is a good 120ºC over what my indoor oven can achieve.

This allows for some of those different cooking modes I mentioned before. Max Roast, for example, cranks up the heat to 370ºC, and will cook a head of cauliflower florets in 5–10 minutes, giving them a beautiful char and a sensational texture.

It also allows for an artisan pizza setting that can cook a pizza in about 3 minutes (provided you don’t mangle it getting it off the peel).

If you need more control, the gourmet roast setting will let you start cooking at a higher temperature, then have a secondary cooking at a lower temperature for a more even cook.

What does the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven do well?

I have to admit that there’s a real versatility to the Woodfire Outdoor Oven. It roasted a perfect chicken, make some beefy jerky and cooked delicious vegetables on a range of settings.

I also made pizza – delicious pizza – that ended up partially mangled due to my inability to effectively use the pizza peel.

I can’t blame Ninja for this. Well, I don’t think I can, anyway. But no matter how well flowered the peel or the base of the pizza was, the pizza base always ended up stuck on the peel as I tried to put it on the pizza stone.

That meant I typically spilled the toppings onto the stone, ended up pushing it off with a flat kitchen turner, which mangled the pizza’s shape.

I tried across eight different pizzas over the 5–6 weeks I’ve been testing the oven, and I’ve never had the pizza come off cleanly.

But despite my failings, I can’t fault the flavour. The pizza stone gave the dough a nice firm crust, and the cheese melted deliciously.

That’s helped in a large part by the simplicity of the controls. You can navigate to the cooking mode, and opt between a range of presets for pizza. But you ultimately end up with controls for temperature and cooking time on the other cooking modes, which means it’s almost a set and forget process.

Adding smoke flavour to your cooking is also simplicity itself, with the pellets poured into the side of the oven, and then the smoke flavour button pressed before starting to cook.

The smoke flavour is much more pronounced when you cook at lower heats. To be completely honest, I couldn’t even notice it when cooking pizza, but the flavour on a batch of beef jerky was exceptional.

You don’t get a massive bag of Woodfire pellets in the box, though, so make sure you budget for more.

What could the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven improve?

While the Oven is big enough to stick in a large chunk of meat, like a whole turkey or a leg of lamb, it’s not what I would describe as big.

If you’re trying to cook for a family, you’ll probably find you need to cook in batches. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it also highlights one of the challenges with the Outdoor Oven: the pre-heat time.

If you’re looking to cook at an extreme temperature like 370ºC, you need to allow about 25 minutes to preheat the oven. While everything I cooked at that temperature tasted delicious, I can’t help but accept that it’s probably quicker to throw it in an air fryer at a lower temperature to cook it faster.

Unlike the Woodfire Grill, the oven is much harder to clean. Particularly if you screw up when you try to slide your pizza off the peel onto the stone, and your toppings go everywhere.

Because of the design of the oven, the bottom element sits directly below the pan or stone, and so if something falls, it will end up underneath the element, which is difficult to get to clean properly.

I also found myself longing for the meat thermometer of the Woodfire Grill. Obviously grilling is better on a grill, despite the Oven’s ability to use extremely high heats to help char pieces of meat.

But to perfectly roast a leg of lamb, or ensuring a roast chicken is cooked to perfection, the thermometer is key. While the Grill is primarily a grill, it also offers roast and baking settings, so you can more easily cook your meat to perfection.

And this is ultimately what the decision comes down to. The Woodfire Grill will do most of the core functions of the Oven, except for extremely high-heat roasting and offering a pizza stone. But it’s an even more versatile appliance, that’s easier to clean.

Verdict

If you have a passion for pizza and want an outdoor pizza oven that you can also use for other things, Ninja’s Woodfire Outdoor Oven is an excellent option.

It has a solid range of features, a robust build that’s weatherproof, and the ability to add smoke to anything you cook inside it.

As an electric appliance, you do need to put a little thought into your setup, but it is easy to use and cooks well.

However, despite its versatility, with multiple functions and its impressively high-temperature settings, I much prefer the Woodfire Grill. There’s a significant overlap between the two appliances, and while the grill may not cook your pizza, it will cook your meat to perfection using the plug-in thermometer.

If you do opt for the Oven, you’re getting a good product. Just be prepared to go to war with the peel to slide your pizza onto the stone.

Buy the Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven online

Ninja Woodfire Outdoor Oven

With eight cooking modes, including artisan pizzas cooked at 370ºC, the Outdoor Oven is a versatile cooking appliance

Check Price @ Amazon