What is a Combi Oven and What Can It Do?

Many chefs adore combi ovens but I've been skeptical. About fifteen years ago, an early model undercooked dumplings that I'd made with a team of chefs for a tasting. They were chewy hard instead of chewy soft. I was not sold on combi ovens back then.

Last year at a professional food service conference, I tried a hamburger that had been cooked in a Rational combi oven. The plush buns had been baked in the combi oven and the patty was seared and cooked in. It was a fantastic burger. That particular combi oven, the size of refrigerator, is for professional kitchens. Is there an affordable home kitchen equivalent? That's why I purchased Ninja's version. Let's test drive the Ninja Combi to evaluate its worthiness for your kitchen.

What is the Ninja Combi and its 14-in-1 versatility?

"Combi" refers to the combination of cooking methods that allows you to choose to cook with steam heat, dry heat, or both. The Ninja Combi oven is a smallish squareish box designed as a multi-cooker. The Ninja.com product description promises the world:

• 14-in-1 versatility: Combi Meals, Combi Crisp, Combi Bake, Rice/Pasta, Sear/Sauté, Steam, Bake, Toast, Pizza, Slow Cook, Proof, Sous Vide, Air Fry, Broil.
• Frozen to table in under 30 minutes: No need to defrost-super-heated steam will quickly thaw frozen ingredients and cook them to a safe temperature in under 30 minutes.
• Complete meals that cook in 15 minutes: Cook your proteins, veggies, and pasta or grains all at the same time and make a meal 50% faster than in a wall oven.
• One stop shop in your kitchen: With its all-in-one functionality and included accessories, the Ninja Combi is the only appliance you will ever need-no more cluttered countertops and endless piles of dishes to clean afterward.
• Easy cleanup: The Combi Cooker Pan doubles as a serving dish and all accessories are dishwasher safe to make cleanup a breeze.
• Ninja Combi™ cooker technology: HyperSteam and Air Fry combine to create juicy insides and deliciously crispy outsides all at once; super-heated steam evenly cooks and locks in juices while rapid cyclonic air crisps food to perfection.

How does a combi oven compare to a regular oven?

Conventional ovens and air-fryers usually operate with just dry heat and the difference between the two is how the hot air circulates. Steam ovens are tightly sealed, cleverly designed ovens that allow you to cook efficiently with convection dry heat and moist steam heat. The rationale for steam is this: steam helps to keep food moist while cooking it faster than dry heat. That's because steam distributes heat very efficiently to cover more surface area of the food being cooked.

Why the Ninja Combi oven? It is a compact steam oven designed for home cooking. Its size is great for small spaces and households of four or less people. Luxe combi ovens made by Miele cost thousands of dollars. Counter top ones can run $500. The Ninja Combi looks awkward. But, but at about $200, it costs way less than the competition. Size and affordability makes the Ninja Combi very attractive.

Watch how the Ninja Combi oven works

But before buy one, see how it works. In the video below, look for basic accessories that come with the oven -- a deep baking tray, perforated tray that goes inside the deep tray for air-frying and roasting, plus a baking sheet. The oven comes with a a lid too.

The instruction manual has minimal instructions. A label on top of the unit says to not operate the Ninja Combi under kitchen cabinets! You will naturally figure the machine out. I did! To easily move the oven around, I stuck these feet under the combi oven.

After the squid and shrimp, I did something easy: roast peanuts on the Bake setting. They came out more evenly roasted than in my regular oven and were done faster than usual because the preheating time is less in the smaller oven. In a toaster oven preheating time is less but the roasting is uneven. So, on a small task like roasting nuts or seeds, the combi oven will save you time and money spent on electricity or gas. After the nuts, I moved on to baking a yeast-leavened bread in the Ninja Combi oven.

As the video showed, the hypersteam action was real. You see so much steam emanating from the top vents of the oven during the baking process. What's also cool for geeky cooks like me is the bread browned practically before my eyes because you get a very close up look at the cooking process in the Ninja Combi. It's fun for food geeks like me. At the 15-minute mark using the Combi Bake mode, I turned down the heat to 350F to slow down cooking. I actually pulled the bread out at 18 minutes because it looked cooked and the temperature signaled doneness. Meanwhile, the regular oven had just preheated to 450F, the original recipe temperature.

Baking in a regular oven vs baking in a combi oven

Here's a comparison of the oven-baked one and the focaccia that resulted from the Ninja Combi Bake mode.

The combi oven-baked bread is the lower one. Look at how the bubbles seemed to push more upwards in the combi oven baked bread. The dough was the same batch. So, you get a different bake due to the steam action that happens for about half of the bake time. When you bake certain breads, steam is help for for crisp crust but I didn't think it would do much for focaccia. Guess I was wrong!

How to clean the combi oven

Cleaning the Ninja Combi oven is easier than you think. Wash the removable parts by hand or do it in the dishwasher. The oven gets very hot so after turning it off, unplug it and leave the door open to hasten cooling. Then I wipe down the oven walls, if needed. The pans themselves, including the perforated tray was so much easier to clean than the tray for my Cuisinart air-fryer, which I have loved for many years.

Pros and cons of a combi oven

The Ninja combi oven is quirky but has potential for being an MVP in your kitchen. My evaluation thus far:

• Combi oven pros: It's affordable, compact, easy to clean, heats up faster and seems to cook faster than a regular oven. The air fry mode is good and there's plenty of space on the crisper tray to fry a nice batch of shrimp or wings for snacking. The viewing window allows you to observe cooking close up. It is easy to dial in temperature and cooking time.
• Combi oven cons: It beeps a lot, heats up very hot, and you need to operate it near a window or with ventilation. Looks wise, it is not sleek and cool. This Ninja Combi is great for anyone cooking for households of four or fewer people.

Is a combi oven worth the investment? I don't know yet. These initial experiments with the Ninja Combi oven make it a very interesting appliance to play with. Let's see what else it can do and how well it can do it. I'm interested in what "combi crisp" does!