Sorry, the Ooni pizza oven is worth it

Summer is right around the corner, which means it’s time to enjoy some great warm weather by the grill. But let me offer you an alternative: instead of the usual burgers, hotdogs and kebabs, what if you made pizza? I’ve been doing this for a few years, and although I still love grilling, it no longer compares to pulling patties from my Ooni Fyra 12.

A pizza oven previously seemed to me like something reserved for loyal pizza lovers. I would never have thought to buy one myself, because for many years I thought I hated pizza, and the British food scene wasn’t exactly full of good options during my childhood, in my defence. But after my partner and I received a gift a few years ago, I spent some time making one of my own, and I have to admit, I became a total convert.

The Ooni Fyra 12 retailed for $349 in the US at launch, but you can no longer buy that specific model on Ooni’s US website. It uses wood pellets for fuel, giving the pizza an authentic wood-fired taste, so a similar replacement would be something like $200 Big Horn Outdoors 12-Inch Oven. Other than that, he appears to be the spiritual successor to Fyra Oni Karowhich sells for the same price of $349 but uses either logs or charcoal.

While the actual refueling process can vary between pizza oven models, the cooking process and speed should be similar. I found the Fyra to be very easy to assemble, only requiring you to connect some chimney pipes and the included flame guards, and comes with clear instructions for use. Karu is visually very similar to Fyra, and The setup process is quite simple -The only real difference is that you’ll be pushing wood or charcoal into the rear fuel chamber instead of specialized wood pellets.

As its name suggests, the Fyra 12 is designed to make 12-inch pizzas. It comes with a square pizza stone that works well, but you can also use replacement 12-inch and steel pizza stones if you prefer. It also came with an Ooni-branded pizza peel (the big paddle you use to move the pizza), but that seems poor quality compared to the unbranded version I’ve used for years at my in-laws’ house, so I’d recommend investing in a better one. The metal that comes with the oven is flimsy, and the plastic handle is not nice, well… handle.

But man, the cooking experience? peerless. On a recent weekend, I had my partner prepare the Ooni because I didn’t want to get my hands dirty before handling the food, and the entire process from assembly to consumption of two hot, fresh pizzas took less than 40 minutes. It took about 15 minutes to preheat the oven by filling the fuel hopper to the top with wood pellets, then about four minutes to bake the pie to perfection. All you have to do during this process is use the peel intermittently to turn the pizza every minute or so. If you have pre-assembled raw pizza or have someone else prepare it to hand out, you can make a lot of food very quickly. I’m confident I can comfortably use this to feed a group of six adults.

Provided you don’t set it and forget it, results will likely depend on the quality of the pizza you eat.to prepare Skills rather than baking skills – something you can easily overcome by purchasing pre-made dough and sauces, or just doing a little practice. But even mediocre pizza can be improved by cooking it with real flames, and it personally only took me a couple of tries to get the hang of making pizza from scratch. It’s a bit like making a pie: They can smell fear The process is actually quite simple, but the first one will probably go wrong.

If you don’t want to make a lot of pizza, you’ll be happy to know that the oven cools down very quickly, so it’s still worth the effort to prepare even just one pie. My pellet-burning model burned its fuel in about 45 minutes, and was cool enough to crank by hand after about an hour. I also find it much easier to clean a grill than an oven because it has less grease. The stone can be washed if necessary, and I only wipe off any soot inside the kiln flues if I notice it building up – usually after a couple of uses.

The oven is also easy to carry. Its legs fold up, so you can put all the ingredients in a bag and carry it to your picnic or barbecue destination. It also doesn’t get so hot that you can’t put it on a wooden table (we’ve had it on several occasions without a defect in the table itself), which is a good thing because bending over to spin a pizza when the tot is on the floor is a quick way to strain your back. I would just caution you against placing the oven with its back on anything. When you open the front grill and chimney vent, the extra airflow makes the fire go out the back vent, so leave plenty of space.

For me, if the sun is shining and we want to cook outside, this wins the BBQ almost every time. It’s quick to prepare, bakes quickly, requires minimal cleanup, and gives you restaurant-quality pizza that’s much better than anything you can cook in your regular oven. Having that authentic char on the crusts is something I’ve only achieved through cooking with real flames. This realization has trickled down to most of our extended family, who are now taking out their own portable pizza ovens for camping trips, beach picnics, and garden parties.

And now I implore you too: Get a dang pizza oven. You don’t even have to like pizza, you’ll learn it.