Ninja Foodi Possible Cooker Plus (Affiliate link)
Video Summary
Hey everyone! I’m so excited to finally share my review of this new Ninja slow cooker that I’ve been wanting for ages! I held out for the black version and waited for a sale because I wasn’t ready to spend $150, but I’m so glad I got it.
What makes this special is the sauté function – I can brown my ground beef and onions right in the same pot before switching to slow cook mode. No extra dishes! I tested it out making chili mac, and I have to say, the sear function works incredibly well. It heated up quickly and got a beautiful brown on the beef much faster than my pressure cooker ever does.
The included spoon is surprisingly sturdy and well-designed with a pour spout, straining side, and even has its own little holder. The functionality to switch between sear/sauté and slow cook modes seamlessly is exactly what I was hoping for.
I did have a little confusion with the timer functions, and I learned you need to watch for the preheat beep, but overall this is going to be perfect for our game nights when I need to cook for more people. The larger size and the fact that I can do everything in one pot makes this a total win for me!
Video Transcript
Welcome back! We have a new toy which I’m so excited about. I have wanted this thing for a while, but I was holding out for the black and I didn’t want to spend $150 on it. So we got it on a sale and I’m going to try this out today. So the reason that I’m most excited about this is because it has a sauté function. So we’re going to be making a chili mac and I’m going to try sautéing some ground beef and some onions in here, and we’re going to see if this thing really works as well as it says it does. So let’s get started and see how the functions work.
Functions Overview
Let’s take a look at the functions. It looks like we have a power button, temperature, time, and start/stop. And then down here we have a dial that allows us to do one of six things: slow cook, sear, sous vide, keep warm, sous vide, braise, and proof. Proof is really interesting because I often have dough and I’m often proofing dough, so I wonder if this will be something that I want to use to proof the dough in. Today though, we’re going to use the sear/sauté function and then the slow cook function. And the sear/sauté, I’m really interested in seeing how it works.
Preheating
So let’s do that. Let’s get this on and heating up because I think that’ll be necessary while we are cutting everything so that it’ll be hot and ready to go for us. So I think I just got it on for however much time it needs. I didn’t look at that, but the buttons look similar to how the Ninja air fryer buttons look, so I think we’re good on that. We’ll increase the time if we need to. Ooh, it’s warm! All right, let’s see. We don’t need the spoon on it. Oh, but that’s neat! Okay, so the spoon sits very nicely just on itself. You don’t even need to put it on like a pad or anything unless you just don’t want the dripping, but it sits nicely down here as well. Okay, let’s get this off. Is it hot? Nope, not hot. Add a little bit of oil.
Sauté Function
Ooh, that was nice! Okay, so already I really like that sizzle because it seems like it heated up very nicely. So something I just learned is that this does beep when it’s preheated. So I put everything in and it sizzled and it was nice and hot, but it wasn’t preheated yet. And so it definitely does beep when it’s preheated. So maybe wait for the preheat, but so far this is sautéing super well and I’m getting ready to add the ground beef. All right, let’s add in the ground beef. Ooh, that has a very nice brown on it!
Slow Cook Function
Okay, I am going to start this over. We’re going to do slow cook this time on high, and then let’s check and see how long it has. Six hours – that’ll be good. We’ll hit start. I now have all the ingredients for our soup inside the crock pot. I’ve switched us over from the sauté function to the slow cook function, and I’m going to let this cook for a few hours until it gets hot. And then we’re going to try adding some noodles in here as well. And so my thought is maybe I can just turn it back on to sear/sauté that way it gets really hot and bubbly and we can cook the noodles directly in the soup. So I did add a little extra liquid so we’d have something to cook the soup in. But so far, let me tell you my first impressions.
The Spoon – First Impression
First impressions of this spoon, which is a weird thing to do a first impressions of, but it is very solid. A lot of my spoons, as I’m using them, kind of like wobble around or you can just tell that they’re not solid, but it is made very sturdily. It has this little pour spout, it has the little – I don’t know what that is – straining side maybe. But it did really well for everything I’ve done, which is, you know, push around the onions, break up the ground beef. It worked really well to break up the ground beef because it’s so sturdy. And then I also use it just to stir the soup and it’s a ladle, so that works well for the soup. It also has this little spot to hold it, which has worked really well. I did put it just right on my little cutting sheet and that way I didn’t get the counter dirty, but that’s worked super well. So that I love it. I don’t really care for it being up here, but I mean, cool that it fits there. Not really something that I think is a necessity.
Sauté Function – First Thoughts
And then for the sear, you guys, that worked so well! The onion sautéed up perfectly, and then the beef I was able to put it in, it got a nice brown on it, and it didn’t even take very long. So in my pressure cooker, it takes forever to sear anything, and in this it did not. So I really love how quickly it seared and how well it seared. I got that nice brown. We were able to get everything completely browned up before slow cooking, and there’s no extra dishes! So I’m loving that there’s no extra dishes here. So now we just need to wait a little bit, see if we can get the noodles cooked in a few hours, and if we can, then I’m going to say this is well worth the price even though it was a splurge.
Here is what our soup is looking like. This has been going for about an hour and a half.
The Vent
I did realize that I had the vent on the back and it was going up and steaming right into my cabinets, which I definitely don’t want. But okay, this is a little bit warm, so we definitely want to grab an oven mitt. Mix these around.
Boiling Noodles
So I’ve added the noodles and I have put this on to preheat for sauté. It’s almost done preheating and it’s already up to a pretty good rolling boil. Woo, that is steamy! So this seems to be working very, very well to be able to get these noodles cooked. This is looking really good. We just need to get these to finish cooking, and I really like how this is working – being able to switch back and forth from slow cook to sauté and vice versa.
Some Timer Confusion
Functionality-wise, it looks like the sauté function is going to be turning off soon. Oh, this is weird. Fifty-one? Trying to figure out what’s going on with the timer here because it was going down and now it’s going up. I’m like, what did I do to change this? So there, it looks like there’s a feature where this can go up and can go down. I’m not figuring it out though. I mean, we can do sauté on low or on high. I like that we’re on high.
Okay, so this started us at 120 and this button I don’t think is doing anything, and this isn’t either, but it was earlier. So this is interesting because when I turned it off and on, I couldn’t do anything there. So we’ll have to try that again once we’re done cooking.
All right, here is our final soup! Oh, that looks so delicious! The consistency of this, everything is just perfect.
Overall Review
Okay, my overall review of this: I have not tried putting the whole thing in the oven yet. I’ve not tried anything but the sear/sauté and the slow cook, but I really do like this. This has been so nice and easy to make this soup. I mean, the other option would have been making it on the stove, but I don’t really like having things simmer on my stove for hours at a time. I’d rather not have the flames. So this was fantastic! I am going to be using it again to make some more soup, so definitely stay tuned for the next video because I will have three different soups. The full recipe for this soup will be in that video, and I am super happy about this because it’s also big and I have people over for game nights quite often. And now I’ll have a bigger crock pot that I can use and I’ll be able to sauté in it. Less dishes! Less dishes is really the win. So I love this. I’m not sponsored by Ninja in any way, but I do just love their products. So this is a product that I’m very happy that I splurged to get. If you’d like to see some other Ninja products, I do have the Ninja air fryer which I did review – I will put that here – and then I have a Ninja blender which I will link a video with it here. I didn’t review it for a video, but I did use it. Thanks so much for being here and I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye!
