I have an issue. It has spanned a few years, price me lots of of kilos and earned the derision – and concern – of family and friends. Don’t fear: it isn’t something sordid but it surely does give me an absurd variety of methods to prepare dinner rooster or dissipate a bag of potatoes.
My poison is Ninja home equipment. Anybody who walks into my tiny kitchen is greatly surprised by my in depth assortment. My prized trio are the Foodi, the Foodi Max Well being Grill and Air Fryer and the Creami, which collectively give me the flexibility to air-fry, grill, sear, roast, pressure-cook, slow-cook, steam and even dehydrate my dinner, and remodel a frozen mishmash of protein powder, yoghurt and sweeteners into an ice-cream-like dessert.
It doesn’t cease there. I additionally personal a Ninja blender, meals processor and hand blender. Whereas much less flashy, they’ve survived my unwise makes an attempt to mince a totally intact topside of beef and switch avocado stones into “detox mud” for an ill-fated “glow-up” smoothie.
I’m removed from the one one who has been taken in by Ninja fever. International gross sales of its merchandise reached virtually $2.9bn in 2024, a 38% soar from almost $2.1bn the yr earlier than. With greater than 50 Ninja kitchen merchandise accessible in Britain, the UK is now the second largest marketplace for their maker, the US-based equipment firm SharkNinja. It’s a exceptional feat contemplating {that a} decade in the past the model was almost unknown within the UK.
It was the air fryer that modified that, notably the two-drawer meals crisper, which hit the outlets in 2020. Launching at £179.99 within the UK ($179.99 within the US), it was swiftly stocked in high-street massive hitters together with Argos and John Lewis. It quickly took the UK, and the world, by storm.
In 2023, John Lewis named the Ninja air fryer as one in all its “merchandise of the last decade”. On Amazon, Ninja’s merchandise dominate the air-fryer bestsellers charts, holding 4 of the highest 5 spots within the UK and the US.
Ninja’s subsequent mega-success was the Creami, which guarantees to show a bath crammed with substances of your selecting right into a creamy, chilly dessert. It launched in 2021 within the US at $179.99 and shortly grew to become a viral hit on social media. By 2022, Ninja claimed it was America’s “No 1 ice-cream maker”, based mostly on gross sales information from market analysis agency NPD Group. On TikTok, the hashtag “#ninjacreami” has 244m views as folks have flocked to the platform to indicate off their recipes. Strained yoghurt and fruits are widespread choices, however others have opted for extra off-piste creations, together with a baked bean “ice-cream”.
The Ninja Slushi (£349.99 within the UK, $349.99 within the US), which lets you make slushies and cocktails at house, is the model’s peacekeepers success, promoting out 15 instances on its launch within the US. On the again of that hit, SharkNinja was this yr named as one in all Time Journal’s prime 100 corporations, becoming a member of the likes of Netflix and Amazon.
The model has additionally executed a exceptional job of getting A-listers to plug its merchandise. Kris Jenner’s Instagram featured a sponsored publish of her singing the machine’s praises. David Beckham is a worldwide model ambassador for Ninja and in a single advert confirmed off a few of his personal culinary quirks – which included utilizing his Ninja Double Stack air fryer (£229.99) to prepare dinner carrots entire, together with the inexperienced tops, and utilizing the Woodfire outside oven (£349.99), which triples up as an oven, pizza oven and BBQ smoker, inside his kitchen. Viewers of the movie F1: The Movie, starring Brad Pitt, will see SharkNinja’s product placement all through – from its emblem stamped on race vehicles to Ninja devices on present in swanky kitchens.
In an interview with Advert Week in March, SharkNinja CEO Mark Barrocas mentioned the corporate spends a lot of its $700m promoting funds on social media. Influencers play such a powerful function in selling the Creami, he mentioned: “We nearly don’t make investments any extra promoting on [it].” The corporate has additionally labored onerous to get its merchandise within the fingers of so-called “microinfluencers” who’ve “nice, genuine followings with smaller area of interest teams”. It’s, merely, phrase of mouth for the social media age.
However this sort of enterprise depends on innovation. SharkNinja pours cash into analysis and growth, with a funds that rose to $341.3m in 2024, up 37% from 2023. It has a crew of greater than 1,100 engineers and designers within the UK, US and China, is usually engaged on 60 merchandise at anyone time and launches about 25 new merchandise a yr.
A few of these are higher worth than others, in keeping with Natalie Hitchins, head of house services at Which? “Ninja continues to be a preferred model with clients, and in terms of air fryers, blenders and multicookers, our testing has discovered that that is largely properly deserved,” she says. “Nonetheless, costs can attain greater than £300 so it definitely isn’t the most affordable. And for those who’re on the lookout for an ice-cream maker or mini-oven, we’ve discovered that there are different manufacturers that carry out higher and value much less, so it’s value wanting elsewhere.”
Like me, Rhianne Crozier has a kitchen stuffed with Ninja home equipment. Her love of the model began six years in the past. After she moved into her new house together with her husband, her mother and father gave her a Ninja air fryer as housewarming present.
Now she owns greater than 10 Ninja devices. They embrace the Creami, Slushi, the Luxe Café espresso machine (£549.99) – a high-end brewer that permits you to make espressos, chilly brews and cafe staples corresponding to lattes and cappuccinos – and the Ninja Speedi multicooker (£229.99), a mixed steamer and air fryer designed for one-pot meals. In complete, she has spent about £2,000 on Ninja merchandise.
The 28-year-old content material creator, who exhibits off her dishes on TikTok beneath the identify Home With Rhianne, has two youngsters. “I’ve cooked meals in about quarter-hour. It’s nice if you’ve acquired hungry youngsters,” she says. “Earlier than I might keep within the kitchen for hours.”
She hasn’t touched her pans or oven in months. “It’s extra handy to only put it in, shut it, take it out. They’re simple to wash afterwards too,” she says.
However does the success of Ninja inform us one thing extra uncomfortable about how we stay at the moment? Pen Vogler, writer of Scoff: A Historical past of Food and Class in Britain, says “these very speedy improvements” are a part of a client tradition the place “there needs to be one thing new continuously”.
My private journey into Ninja-obsession did begin with want. After I moved into my small flat, it was unfurnished. After shopping for one thing to sleep on (my mattress) and one thing to look at (my TV), cash was too tight to deck out my kitchen with pots, pans and baking trays. As an alternative, I opted for a Ninja Foodi, which set me again simply over £100. It allowed me to sear, pressure-cook and air-fry my meals with out having to purchase a great deal of further tools, and it was a lot faster than utilizing the oven. I’m not the one one who struggles for house – one examine by the College of Studying discovered that the dwelling house of the typical personal renter in Britain shrank from 31 sq metres in 1996 to 25 sq metres in 2017; and households are renting increasingly smaller homes as the price of dwelling soars.
Vogler says that within the Victorian period, dwelling house was additionally very tight, and cooking devices had been additionally enormously in style. She factors to Charles Dickens, who in his 1841 novel The Previous Curiosity Store described a silver “temple” with 4 chambers. In a single, an egg was positioned and in one other, some espresso was poured. Uncooked steak and water had been put in and, after the machine labored its magic, “breakfast was prepared”. It’s, says Vogler, “like a type of Victorian air fryer”. A scarcity of dwelling house means folks will “attempt to use what know-how they’ve accessible to reply the issues of learn how to prepare dinner. What Ninja is doing now’s only a continuation of one thing that has been taking place for hundreds of years. Expertise comes alongside and it finds an answer to our home issues.”
What began for me as an answer to an area drawback quickly grew to become one thing else. I grew to become obsessive about the Ninja model, eagerly following its social media to see what machine it might deliver out to tempt me with subsequent. Just lately, nevertheless, the shine has worn off. Whereas the Slushi has been a sensation, it lacks many issues which have beforehand bought me on the model. Sure, it permits you to make slushie drinks and cocktails, however there are main setbacks. It takes not less than half an hour to provide a drink, lacks that “I can see myself utilizing this day by day” issue and, most significantly, doesn’t appear to have many well being benefits, as sugar have to be used for many drinks to work within the machine.
“Well being is turning into a extremely necessary a part of our cooking know-how,” says Vogler. And Ninja’s success has definitely performed on our worries about ultra-processed meals. “There’s a big ingredient of tension round industrial meals that’s sending folks again to attempt to make it for themselves,” says Vogler, which “air fryers and kitchen devices will do properly from. If individuals are shifting again to cooking, they may at all times need a quick and simple solution to do it.”
Ninja has tailored to 2020s dwelling, however how have the devices modified us? Earlier than the air fryer, there was the microwave. Each have been accused of tarnishing the culinary arts, however Vogler says a few of our most beloved dishes had been born out of recent kitchen know-how.
For her, the air fryer has an unlikely relative. “Forged iron ovens first got here in about 300 years in the past. It was a large new know-how and can be when our period of home-baking took off,” she says. It ushered in a few of our favorite dishes, together with eccles muffins and baked tarts.
Judy Joo, TV chef and proprietor of the London-based Korean restaurant Seoul Chicken, says kitchen devices might be “nice”, however they’ve limits. “Typically you simply need to prepare dinner one thing the way in which it was supposed,” she says.
That features having the ability to watch what’s happening. With Ninja home equipment, notably the air fryers and multi-cookers, you find yourself shoving one thing in a draw or sealing a lid. For Joo, visibility is essential. “It is best to have the ability to see meals cooking and altering versus one thing that you just say goodbye to and open up the door as soon as it’s prepared,” she says. “You lose management of the cooking course of.”
And, she says, air fryers won’t ever totally replicate one thing deep-fried, like rooster. “It’s a compromise,” she says. “You don’t get issues as crispy. It’s crispy-ish, but it surely’s undoubtedly not the identical. You can inform the distinction 100%.”
For her, nothing fairly beats the kitchen classics, notably the satisfaction of “getting out a daily pot or pan, drizzling oil, listening to the sizzle and cracking an egg”. The standard frying pan is rather more versatile than it’s given credit score for, contemplating you may “glaze, simmer and saute” in it, she says. “You’ll be able to’t deglaze in an air fryer.”