Ninja Foodi Mini 6-in-1 Multi-Cooker OP100UK Review

The Ninja Foodi Mini 6-in-1 Multi-Cooker OP100U is a great piece of kit to have to hand for preparing a range of slow-cooked meals and more.

We've highlighted it as the best slow cooker you can buy.

While the Ninja Foodi Mini 6-in-1 Multi-Cooker OP100U is predominately a pressure-cooker that crisps, it features a one-touch preset button on its control panel for slow cooking - with fantastic results. It can also roast, bake, air crisp and more and lets you easily switch between making speedy suppers and lazy weekend meals with ease.

Kitchen appliance specialist Ninja is best known for its collection of personal and multi-serve blenders, but its cooking collection is growing rapidly in size and popularity. As well as a large collection of multi-cookers spanning a range of sizes from those with a decent 4.7 litres, to those with a whopping 7.5 litres, Ninja also sells an ample collection of dedicated air fryers. We have picked out this Ninja Foodi Mini 6-in-1 Multi-Cooker as a great entry-level Ninja multi-cooker as, with a 4.7 litre capacity, it has more than enough room to serve a family of six and cook a large roast chicken inside.

Ninja Foodi Multi-Cooker

Star rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Design

What we like about the Ninja Foodi Mini 6-in-1 Multi-Cooker is its bold design, which is attractive enough to consider as a permanent fixture on your worktop. While some may find its glossy black body a little too imposing, for those with enough room to house it on the worktop, you can't go wrong.

There are five multi-cookers in the Ninja range from this 4.7 litre Ninja Foodi Mini 6-in-1 Multi-Cooker, to the larger Ninja Foodi MAX 9-in-1 7.5 litre Multi-Cooker. While the Ninja Foodi Mini 6-in-1 Multi-Cooker is the smallest in Ninja’s intuitive collection, it packs a punch and provides more than enough space inside to cook meals for at least up six at a time. Its 4.7 litre capacity is enough to accommodate a whole 1.5kg chicken in fact.

One of the main attractions of the Ninja Foodi Mini 6-in-1 Multi-Cooker cooker is that it features Ninja’s TenderCrisp Technology, which can prepare meals up to 70% faster than traditional cooking methods. It also finishes it with a crispy golden top. This means it’s great for roasting whole cuts of meat or crisping the top of a pot roast, for example. You can also use the multi-cooker to steam vegetables and roast potatoes, all within the one compact design, which means you can prepare a full Sunday lunch for the whole household without the need to use a conventional oven. We think that if you’re going to opt for a slow cooker, you may as well get one that has the added benefit of pressure cooking, baking, roasting and more on board too.

For our round up of the best slow cookers for 2021, we focused on the Ninja Foodi Mini 6-in-1 Multi-Cooker's useful slow cook setting, which allows you to tenderise cuts of meat for up to eight hours at a time. Set up out the box was simple and inside you’ll also find a separate pressure lid, a removable cooking pot, a cook and crisp tray for air frying foods and a rack for steaming vegetables and fish. For the slow cook setting, all you really need is the removable cooking pot, which easily lifts out of the base. While it's lightweight in design, when it's full of food it can become heavy, so you need to take care when removing it after a cook and use cooking mitts too.

Design wise, the body and controls are very straightforward to navigate. Simply put your ingredients in and press the turn on button, then the ‘slow cook’ button, choose your time and temperature preferences and press start. You can easily adjust the time and temperature using the up and down arrows too, which are located on the sides of the control panel.

Features

We love the fact that the Ninja Foodi Mini 6-in-1 Multi-Cooker features Ninja’s TenderCrisp Technology, which prepares meals up to 70 per cent faster than traditional cooking methods and finishes it with a crispy golden top. But we're here to focus on the slow cook settings...

Using the slow cook preset, the Ninja Foodi Mini 6-in-1 Multi-Cooker can slow cook delicious soups and stews leisurely in up to eight hours. To see how well it could handle chunks of meat, we used it to make a Lamb Tagine recipe. We prepped by chopping the onions and collating all our spices, which included onion, ground cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, coriander and red chill flakes. We popped them straight into the Ninja and first used the Sear/Sauté button to brown the ingredients before our slow cook. We also popped the chunks of lamb in after the onions to seal the dish. This is a great setting to have as it means you don't need to sauté ingredients on the stovetop before slow cooking them, and therefore limiting the number of messy pans that need to be washed up after. The sauté setting works quickly too and the pot heated up in under a minute, and we were able to roughly brown our ingredients in around three.

You need to use the spare pressure lid when using the slow cook feature here, but this is relatively easy to lock into place.  You do need to consider the space around the appliance and make sure there is ample room to use it as the other crisper lid does not come off and will remain upright during the cooking process. You also need to make sure the pressure release valve is in the vented position. You can then choose High or Low settings and adjust the time in increments of 15 minutes up to eight hours. We chose four hours on High, which was more than enough for our lamb tagine - the meat came out tender and broke down beautifully with a fork, while the carrots remained in shape and retained a perfect hint of firmness. Once the slow cook finishes the Ninja will beep and switch to the keep warm function to keep your food warm for up to 12 hours – while you may not need to wait the 12 hours, it definitely comes in useful if you’re not ready to eat the dish straight away.

Value for money

Type 'slow cooker' into Google and you'll see the majority of slow cookers start around the £30 mark. A slow cooker at this price however will only give you basic slow cook features and won't include all the versatile functions such as pressure cooking, sautéing and steaming. The Ninja Foodi Mini 6-in-1 Multi-Cooker can offer so much more than you standard slow cooker, which is why at £169.99 we think the Ninja Foodi Mini 6-in-1 Multi Cooker is well worth the extra spend.

If you're willing to spend a little more on a slow cooker and looking for a premium model with extra functionality, you might like to look at our Sage The Fast Flow Pro review. And don't miss the rest of our kitchen appliance reviews.