Ninja Woodfire 8-in-1 Outdoor Oven: A game changer for pizza lovers

Comedian Mike Birbiglia once joked he’d happily marry pizza, but it would just be an elaborate ploy to eat her whole family at the wedding. Count us in, and we’ll bring the Ninja Woodfire 8-in-1 Outdoor Oven as a wedding gift.

This pizza oven is a game changer for those who want to make a restaurant-quality pie at home.

Instead of wood, charcoal or propane as fuel, the oven plugs into a standard electrical outlet. That makes it suitable for indoor or outdoor use. And because it can heat up to 700 degrees, it may be the most perfect pizza oven we’ve ever tested.

Ninja makes kitchen appliances that are easy to love. The Woodfire pizza oven is no exception. Turn a dial, choose a pizza setting and the oven preheats a removable stone to the proper temperature for whatever style of pie you choose to make. That top temp of 700 degrees is hotter than a typical kitchen oven can go and is a sweet spot for turning out Neapolitan-style pizzas with classic charring, puffed-up crusts and a nice crunch in under three minutes. A side hopper for wood pellets allows you to simultaneously add a smoky flavor to anything you’re cooking, whether that’s a pizza baked at 700 degrees, a pork shoulder roasted at 325 degrees or salmon fillets cold- smoked at 105 degrees.

The oven’s compact size allows you to use it on a kitchen counter or set it on a picnic table outside. The oven is wide enough to bake a 12-inch pizza and tall enough to roast a whole chicken, slow-smoke a pork shoulder or bake a loaf of bread.

We loved the smoky notes the pellets lent to our food and adored the oven’s specialty roasting feature, which allows you to program it to begin at one temperature, then change to another. A whole chicken roasted for a few minutes at 500 degrees, then finished at 325, for example, yields crackly skin and juicy meat.

This Ninja pizza oven is an all-star. It can stay outside year-round, but we’ll be using it indoors this winter, too.