As working parents, what Ninja should we buy?

[CoralHare]

Hi,
I’m trying hard to improve our diet as a family but my DH and I both work full time and often need to login to meetings in the evening too. So our cooking/food window is relatively small.

I’m looking to buy a Ninja to speed up making healthy food. But which one? I have three hungry boys at home. Would the 15in 1 be the best option?

Any advice welcome!

I would think about what meals you’d actually make in one and the quantity of food you need to cook. Personally, I don’t think they’re all they’re cracked up to be, though are great if you cook chips or chicken dippers regularly. That’s pretty much all we use ours for.

We have one of the big dual drawer ones and it isn’t enough to cook a meal for a family of 4 (7 & 12 year old). We might be able to cook a protein in one drawer and veg in the other (if we don’t want much veg), but you still have to cook the carb in the oven. The same size one works well for BIL/SIL as it’s just the 2 of them. But it really isn’t time saving if you’re looking to cook an actual family meal.

The drawers themselves are like a little more than side plate sized, so just imagine how much food you could fit on two side plates (with a little bit of a pile). It’s not much. And you do need to be around to check on it every 10 minutes or so as stuff burns quickly.

It does cook great chips and easily, so time saving for things like that when we need to use the oven for other things. I don’t think it’s the solution it’s been marketed as though (sorry!).

Thanks for your experience. Definitely trying to avoid the chips and fishfinger dinners!

The 15in 1 doesn’t have drawers and has 7.5Ls capacity so hoping that will be big enough? Mainly I’m thinking the pressure cook or steam and air fry would be good for protein, carbs and veg in one pot.

I'm coveting the Nina Foodie 8 in 1 at the moment, but I love slow cooker type foods. I could happily live on casseroles, chilli, bolognaise, pot roast and never use the oven again. This particular slow cooker has the ability to sear the meat and veg first so in my head the way I see it working for us would be

• wake up and chuck the meat and onions in the ninja, sear/brown it while I'm making DDs breakfast and chivying her along to get dressed etc. Add the stock, other veg, tomatoes or whatever and switch it to slow cooker mode, then forgot about it till it's time to eat, it automatically switches to 'keep warm' mode once the slow cook programme has finished. Can also take the lid off and put it in 'simmer' mode for a bit while I get plates and such out and get the table set to thicken up the sauce a bit.

I currently have a £20 slow cooker I picked up a couple of months ago in Asda which I use a lot, but if I want to brown the meat for added flavour then I need to do that before putting it in the cooker and if I want to reduce it down at the end then I need to move it into another pan to simmer on the stove.

I tend to just do microwave sides like rice, corn on the cob or steam bags of veg.

Thanks @InfoSecInTheCity that sounds fab! Will have to check it out.