Ninja - Ninja® Foodi™ Cold & Hot Blender - Stainless Steel

I always wait a while before reviewing my best buy products for accuracy. This blender makes the best soup and smoothie! And its easy to clean, though i wish it had an easy pour. Love the heating element and the tamper. Price point is fantastic for the quality. My last ninja stopped giving smooth blend after 2 years so I was skeptical on this but I'm glad I gave this a try and hope it lasts for years.

You can make soup ice cream mixed drinks immunity drinks your own garlic butter and so much more. I’m working on making apple butter and infusing my drinks. It also self cleans which makes for easy clean up.

This blender works great, it works like The Vitamix blender. And the price is Excellent!!! It makes the best smoothies and ice cream. I haven’t made soup in this yet, but I will.

I bought this item for my adult daughter and she loves it.

Pros Can blend ice very smooth Makes ice cream without fuss Can make smooth and hearty soups Has a keep warm function after cooking Has built in heating element Cleans up quick and easily Easy to use after you get the hang of it Beeps to warn you before blending Automatically mixes soups while cooking Cons Heavy Manually cooking options don’t include periodic mixing Cleaning doesn’t get all areas clean Base of picture cannot get wet Design The Ninja Foodi Cold & Hot Blender has the distinct styling that is instantly recognizable if you have used other Ninja Kitchen products. The controls are use the same membrane style buttons to make cleanup easy and include a status display to let you know what mode, or time, you have the blender set. You would be forgiven for thinking this is a run of the mill blender as it looks pretty much like any blender until you realize the base of the glass pitcher is much thicker than normal. The reason for this is inside the base of the pitcher is a heating element. In the past, blenders that cooked with use the friction of the blade to heat up the ingredients quickly but always leave you with a smooth soup. The Foodi instead slows the process down a bit to allow the option of cooking hearty soups. The pitcher is not dishwasher safe and even shouldn’t get the base wet due to the heating elements. This is possibly why included in the feature set is a clean function. Usage and Performance Initially it can seem a bit confusing how you use it. It helps you use a couple of the recipes in the included book first to get a better hang of it. Once you understand how the process works, operation is simple and straightforward. If you are making a soup that has aromatic ingredients, like diced onions, you can put them in first and use a 5-minute sauté option. This heats up the ingredients and blends them slightly. Once you are ready to start the actual soup, you just dump in your ingredients and press either hearty or smooth. The main difference is smooth blends the soup while mixing and the hearty option mostly only stirs the soup. Hearty also skips the final blend at the end of cooking. In both cases, it will beep a few times just before the stirring occurs to warn you. This is particularly helpful when you have your face down near the picture to check on the results as sometimes it can push out steam when the mixing occurs. In most cases, the soup takes a maximum of 35 minutes. You can continue to let it cook if the soup isn’t done but that is rarely the case. Even with raw meats, like cubed chicken, they are fully cooked in the 35 minutes. Once you understand how to adapt your recipes it becomes very convenient. You don’t have to watch over this and watch for burning or even worry about stirring. There is also a manual cook option where you can set your own temperature to low, medium, or high but this option is completely manual. Ideally it would have been nice if you the manual options could be set so that once you enter them, you don’t have to check back and it would stir for you, end the cook at the set time, and switch to warm automatically. Unfortunately, in manual mode it is fully manual in every way. This means even stirring requires you to manual pulse the blades for a brief time. It’s still convenient but seems like a bit of a missed opportunity. Besides making smoothies and crushed ice, which is does quite well, you can also make ice cream. The bonus is just how quickly it makes homemade ice cream. Of course, the kids will still find it hard to wait but you would be hard pressed to make it from scratch any faster and kids really seem to enjoy watching the process happen. There is an extra step of letting some ingredients cool in your freezing first as well as a post blend freeze but the whole process is still quick. There is no need for salt ice or stir for hours. If there was anything to consider a downsize in the process, it would be the small batch sizes. Even this isn’t much of a downside as you can quickly follow up with another batch or even use the opportunity to make more than one flavor. The one elusive part of making ice cream so far is obtaining the buttery smooth. Using the included recipes, the ice cream is smoother than regular homemade ice cream but still not quite the buttery smooth of some brands you can buy at the grocery store. Hopefully this is just a matter of finding the right recipe but regardless, making ice cream from scratch this quick and easy makes it worth it. Cleanup is easier than you first might think. The pitcher cannot get wet the clean function is like having a build in dishwasher. The key is to run the cleaning cycle right after you are done and before food hardens. You put water up the to the specified line and add a few drops of soup. It will start with an initial mix to get the soup bubbled up and then it heats up the water just like a dishwasher. You can walk away and six minutes later the process is done. The process isn’t flawless and sometimes doesn’t clean the lid and hardened foods will require using the included cleaning brush but overall, it’s much easier than other options. This convenience and versatility do come at a cost. By including a built-in heating element into the pitcher, it had to be made of glass. The glass picture by itself is already heavy but including the heating element makes it even heavier. For some, this can present a problem because when you are dealing with a hot soup the only acceptable place to grab is on the handle. Your instinct is to support it picture with two hands to pour but that is asking to get burned. The manual even warns against holder anywhere except on the handle. If you have weak arms or wrists, it might be best to test weight in the store to see if you can use it one handed. Hopefully Ninja will come up with a solution to this in future versions. Final Thoughts The Ninja Foodi Cold & Hot Blender is one of those kitchen items that might make you wonder if is even worth it in the beginning. It wouldn’t be a surprise was to wonder why a blender is making soups and cheese dips. If you are the type who loves soups, cheese dips, or homemade ice cream you will find this blender is surprisingly useful and convenient.