Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Easy learning curve
- Glass cooking containers let you keep a close eye on cooking
- Most recipes came out exceptionally well in our testing
- Quick to clean, easy to store
Cons
- Not ideal for larger items
- Some trial and error may be required to master recipes
- Lots of parts may be hard to keep track of
Our Verdict
The Ninja Crispi is compact, easy to clean, and cooks awfully well – and thanks to its glass cooking containers, it lets you see your food instead of hiding it behind an opaque basket. Larger items may not cook perfectly, but if you’re preparing a meal for one or two, the Crispi is an easy recommendation for quickly – and crispily – getting dinner on the table.
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It may be hard to believe, but there was a time in your life when you’d never heard of an air fryer. Today, of course, the device is all the rage in kitchens around the world, as folks embrace the power of what is essentially a pint-sized convection oven that can fry foods with minimal oil and which can sit comfortably on a countertop.
Air fryers now come in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and styles, from single-serving devices to dual-drawer models, to large toaster ovens that feature air-frying tech.
The latest comes from Ninja, in the form of an unusual air fryer called the Crispi. Its unique design features a modular cooking element that rests on top of a glass cooking vessel. I like to think of it as one of those overhead, bonnet-style hair dryers, except designed for food.
Design and Build
- Comes with two glass cooking/storage containers
- Can be used right on the countertop
- Countertop- and dishwasher-safe
The Crispi box comes with an array of pieces, but a sole electronic component, which I can best describe as a handheld heating element, a bit like an immersion blender. Rather than move a basket in and out of the appliance as you would with a traditional air fryer, with the Crispi you place the heating element directly on top of a glass vessel to cook, and then you remove the element when you’re done.
Christopher Null / Foundry
If you have multiple containers, you can cook in sequence, moving the Crispi from one dish to the next. And when dinner is over, the included storage lids let you pop leftovers directly into the fridge without having to clean anything.
The Crispi unit itself is reasonably compact, with a footprint of about 20x20cm/8x8in square and measuring about 15cm/6in tall. Even with all the extra components, everything stacks reasonably neatly and compactly when you want to put it away.
Included storage lids let you pop leftovers directly into the fridge without having to clean anything
Two glass containers are included – a large 3.8-litre/4-quart container and a smaller 1.4-litre/6-cup one. Additional sizes can be purchased separately. Both come with fixed plastic handles and feet which can’t be removed. But you can remove the “crisping plate” designed to fit snugly inside each container – an elevated surface upon which food rests while it’s cooking, allowing the heated air to circulate.
The containers are countertop safe, so you don’t need to worry about burning the table while you’re cooking on it. The Crispi cooking element itself is also safe to set down on the counter, thanks to rubber feet on each corner, even when it’s been actively fired up for hours.
Performance and Features
- Four cooking modes
- Glass sides let you see cooking in progress
- Can be stowed in a cupboard
For more than a week I cooked just about everything I could in the Crispi, including pork chops, French fries, a whole chicken, and even chocolate chip cookies – basically anything you might conceivably want to consume crispy, as the name suggests.
As is customary with Ninja products, there’s a learning curve here, but with the Crispi it’s a very shallow one. The device has only four cooking modes – bake, air fry, recrisp, and max crisp – each corresponding to a range of temperatures and fan speeds. But note that these aren’t adjustable the way a standard oven is. (You should also note that in the US, a cheaper three-mode version of the Crispi is occasionally on sale, so make sure you get the one you want if you buy.)
The glass containers are particularly handy since they let you see how cooking is coming along
To get going, you select a mode, use the timer buttons to plug in the number of minutes you’d like to cook, and hit Start. The only real challenge is figuring out which mode to use – a choice that’s partly driven by recipe, partly by trial and error.
Your food cooks in the glass container underneath, usually while resting on top of the fitted crisping tray. The glass containers are particularly handy as they let you see how cooking is coming along – and so you can watch any fat drip down into the tray below, which at least offers hope that what you’re making is healthier than if you were cooking it in a pool of its own oil.
I didn’t prepare a meal that I’d consider a failure, although asking the Crispi to cook even the smallest whole chicken I could find was asking a lot of it. The chicken took about 70 minutes to fully cook and the skin never really crisped up the way other items I prepared did, though the meat did cook fully through and was perfectly moist (and it looked great on camera, too).
Christopher Null / Foundry
Panko-breaded cauliflower was probably my biggest success – tender inside and crunchy outside, in just 15 minutes – and even the cookies I baked, one at a time, were excellent, requiring only 4 or 5 minutes to cook (although they did look a bit burnt).
Christopher Null / Foundry
Cleanup is also easy with the Crispi, as everything except the heating element can go into the dishwasher. I did find that debris sometimes got caught in the small space between the glass and the plastic base – a complaint I’ve read online as well – but my dishwasher was able to get this cleaned up perfectly in my testing. Sustained usage may tell a different story, though.
Finally, when I was done using it, the device was easy to stow away, unlike a traditional air fryer which is probably destined to remain on the countertop.
Price and Availability
The Crispi comes in three colour options: stone, sage and cyber blue.
In the UK, it’s available from a number of retailers, including Amazon, AO, Argos and Ninja itself for £179.99. In the US, you can buy it from Amazon and Ninja, among other retailers, for $179.99.
This makes it cheaper than any of Ninja’s other top air fryers, although it’s still much pricier than most other rivals. For its feature set, it’s a good buy: you won’t find another portable modular air fryer around as of yet. But bear in mind that the one area in which it can’t compete with most models is cooking capacity.
Should you buy the Ninja Crispi?
The Ninja Crispi is more expensive than other air fryers of its size, which are usually available for well under £100/$100. If you’re the type of person who just wants to toss some wings in a basket occasionally and not have to think about the rest of the cooking cycle, a traditional air fryer will probably serve you just fine.
The Crispi offers a slightly different value proposition, though, and I think home chefs who want a little more real-time insight into and control over their cooking will benefit from the Crispi’s glass cooking vessels. But even if you’re not a budding Gordon Ramsey, everyone will appreciate the countertop-safe design, easy clean-up, and – especially – the fact that the Crispi doesn’t require a permanent spot on your counter.
Best of all, it also happens to cook exceptionally well. I know I’ll be leaning on it for air-fried dinners for months and years to come.