Ninja Foodi Blender & Soup Maker HB150UK review

One-minute review

With an ever-increasing range of innovative kitchen appliances under its belt, Ninja has fast become a recognizable and trusted brand in our homes. From some of the best Instant Pot alternatives to blenders as well as air fryers, Ninja knows how to make kitchen appliances.

The Ninja Foodi Blender & Soup Maker, which is known as the Ninja Foodi Cold & Hot Blender in the US. It’s a blender that can, well, blend cold and hot foods, making it ideal for creating soups as well as smoothies. Unlike other soup makers on the market that utilise the friction from the spinning blades to create heat, the Ninja Foodi Blender & Soup Maker has a built-in heating element, which makes the appliance less noisy in use, and also ensures you can create chunky as well as smooth soups.  

With 10 Auto-IQ pre-set smart programs for all your favorite foods (12 on the US model), this blender takes the thinking out of creating delicious smoothies and soups. It aced most of our tests and was simple to use. It’s not too big and the glass pitcher feels sturdy, but it is heavy. It’s ideal for making small batches of soup and sauces as well as taking care of all your other daily blending requirements.

Ninja Foodi Blender and Soup Maker HB150UK price and availability

• List price: £149.99 / $159.99

As we mentioned above, in the UK it’s called the Ninja Foodi Blender & Soup Maker and it’s known as the Ninja Foodi Cold & Hot Blender in the US. It’s available from the Ninja Kitchen website in both countries, as well as retailers including Amazon, and will set you back £149.99 / $159.99.

It’s one of the most expensive blenders offered by Ninja, but the addition of a heating element and soup programs also makes it much more versatile than the standard blend-only models.

Design

• Saute and keep warm functions
• Four blend and four cook programs
• Heat resistant glass pitcher

The Ninja Foodi Blender & Soup Maker is no bigger or smaller than an average blender in terms of the footprint on the counter, but the base gets wider further up and it starts to feel quite chunky. It measures 45 x 20 x 21.5 cm / 17.9 x 7.9 x 8.8 inches (h x w d). The black and stainless-steel styling makes it look like a practical appliance that means business, not one that’s just there to look pretty. Having said that, it’s certainly not a blender you’ll feel the need to hide away in a cupboard.

The overall weight of the base with the pitcher is 5.6kg / 12 lb so if you do want to store it in a cupboard, it’s not too heavy to move. The glass pitcher is made from thick heat-resistant glass which, while it’s not too heavy to store away, does mean it's heavy to use, especially when you start adding lots of ingredients or pour hot soup. Our other gripe with the pitcher is that it can only be positioned onto the base with the handle to the right, so it’s not ideal for left-handed people.

There are no additional accessories in the box, just a tamper, and a cleaning brush. It also comes with a small recipe book that has guidance on quantities for creating custom soups, which is helpful if you want to use it for your favorite soup recipes.

There are four cold blending programs and four cook programs, the cook programs are complemented by two pre-cook programs: chop and sauté. After cooking, keep warm will switch on and keep your creation warm for up to 60 minutes. On the US model, there are three additional infuse programs that use heat to infuse flavors into liquids for cocktails, mixers, and water.

All the Auto-IQ programs use automated patterns of pulsing and pausing over a pre-set time to create the perfect results. But if you prefer to have more control, there's a manual blend setting with the option for low, medium, or high speed as well as pulse. There’s also a manual cook setting where you can choose between low, medium, or high heat.

The lid center cap and tamper are dishwasher safe, but due to the heating element, the pitcher can’t be submerged in water. The pitcher does have a non-stick coating though and there’s also a clean program that uses a combination of heat and rapid pulses to remove residues and minimize the amount of cleaning you have to do by hand.

Performance

• Easy to use
• Creates silky smooth soup
• Powerful blender

To try out the blending capabilities of the Ninja Foodi Blender & Soup Maker, we first made a smoothie. We liquidized pineapple, spinach, banana, yogurt and apple juice using the preset smoothie program. It took 45 seconds and at the end we did spot a few tiny pieces of spinach that hadn’t been completely broken down. But otherwise, the smoothie was the perfect texture, with a smooth mouthfeel and no obvious fibrous pieces that hadn’t been liquidized.

Next up we chopped some hazelnuts, using the manual pulse setting. In just 20 seconds the nuts were finely chopped. Some had been over chopped and turned into powder, but overall, we were happy with the result. This was the noisiest of all our tests, with the noise meter reading 86dB, which is equivalent to the sound level created by a vacuum cleaner. However, as it’s only for a short period of time, we feel this is more than acceptable. 

There’s no ice crush program but nevertheless, the Ninja was able to produce evenly crushed ice with just five quick presses of the pulse button. Furthermore, when we filled it up with water to the maximum capacity and set it to blend on high speed, there was no leaking.

Using the low-speed setting we made an impressive thick mayonnaise in just two minutes. The blades reach low enough to mix even small quantities sitting in the base of the pitcher. But it was tricky to scrape all the mayo out from under the blades. This was when the automatic clean program came in handy. We followed the directions in the manual for water and dishwashing liquid and let it clean off the worst of the oily mayo residue. The program takes quite a lengthy six and a half minutes but uses heat and blending to clean the pitcher. It did a good job at removing most of the mayo so all it needed was a quick wipe and a rinse afterward.

The recipe book gives advice on how to create custom smooth soups, so we followed the guidance on the ideal quantities of liquid and vegetables to create a carrot and coriander/cilantro soup. As directed, we added quartered onion, garlic, ginger, spices, and oil, then used the chop function which blends it for just 12 seconds. Next, we switched to the sauté function, which cooks for five minutes without blending, so you may need to stir the ingredients during this stage. We added the carrots and stock, selected smooth soup and let it get to work. The soup program takes 30 minutes, it heats the soup and uses short bursts of blending to mix the ingredients before blending to a smooth soup at the very end of the program.

The glass pitcher reached 70 C / 158 F 70 during cooking and the top of the lid reached 60 C / 140 F so you must take care not to get burnt, although it’s worth noting that the handle on the pitcher stayed cool. Furthermore, the soup was 100 C / 212 F at the end of the program and we nearly got burnt by the steam when removing the lid. Aside from this, the soup itself was beautifully cooked with a silky smooth texture, a great result for very little effort.

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