This Dual-Basket Air Fryer Can Cook a Full Meal at Once
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The Good
- Two individual baskets with racks for more food
- Separate cooking zones and controls
- Easy-to-use digital panel
The Bad- Bulky design takes up a lot of counter space
- Loud
- Heating elements in the back
- Narrow baskets
Table of Contents
It’s fair to say air fryers have earned a place in the kitchen. They can be economical, make a kitchen more accessible, and help folks make healthier meals. For several months, I’ve been using the Ninja DoubleStack XL air fryer, and its unusual design might makes it a one-stop-shop for cooking an entire meal. Read on for my thoughts to help determine if this air fryer might be the one for you.
Why this air fryer is special
The Ninja DoubleStack XL has two unusual features: There are two baskets, and they’re vertically oriented—perhaps, one might say, stacked. Air fryers typically have only a single basket, or if they have two, they’re side-by-side. This vertical exploration appeals to a big concern of mine—a minimal countertop footprint, which is perfect for those with smaller kitchens.
That said, the Ninja DoubleStack is by no means small. It measures 11.25 inches by 19.22 inches by 15.14 inches, which is bigger than carry-on luggage for some budget airlines. However, the DoubleStack’s tall design does make it feel like it’s less dominating than something wide.
You have to be smart about where the air fryer is placed, though. I happen to have a rather useless corner of my counter and this air fryer snuggles in just under my cabinets perfectly without me having to work around it. I pull it out when it’s in use so the ventilation is better, but when I’m done I just push it all the way to the wall, and my cats use it as a springboard to get on and off the fridge.
The two separate baskets are the real win here, enabling me to use the different zones for foods that need different cooking temperatures. Even better, each basket has two wire racks, which really helps when you need to cook a lot at once.
How the Ninja DoubleStack XL stacks up
The upsides
One of the biggest limitations of most air fryers is that you can’t efficiently cook multiple items that use different fans speeds or temperatures. You have to load up the basket or tray, cook one thing, unload it and reload it with the next. Your roast pork loin or chicken cutlets might be cold by the time the veggie sides emerge.
With the Ninja DoubleStack, you can load up the two baskets, secure in the fact that each one will appropriately cook the individual item, and you can coordinate your food to finish at around the same time. The digital panel is intuitive and makes it easy to start one cooking zone, pause another, increase the cooking time, or change the fan speed (which usually reads as air fry, roast, bake, warm, and more). I’ll often give my veggie burgers an extra two minutes to air fry while the buns are gently warming in the top drawer.
The DoubleStack air fries a variety of foods well. While it works slightly less quickly, or perhaps less aggressively, than my Instant Vortex air fryer, it's nothing that a little patience and flipping doesn't solve.
The downsides
This is a small but real nuisance: Air fryers aren’t exactly silent machines—they all have a high-powered fan forcing the hot air around the oven space—but this one has two. Once you get over the white noise of the appliance, it’s no big deal; that is, until you press a button to pause it or restart it. All Ninja air fryers have the same loud “boo-BOOP” and I wish in my heart that there was a volume control feature. Maybe there will be for the next generation of DoubleStack.
Since this Ninja has two heating elements and fans, the designers figured it best to situate them in the back of the baskets. (For reference, most air fryers heat from the top.) This is OK, but it’s not great because the back of the basket gets a more direct blast of heat. I’ve found that other air fryers that heat from the top down crisp and brown the items inside faster and more evenly.
In an effort to take up less space side-to-side, the Ninja has skinnier baskets than single-basket air fryers. Ninja makes up for that with a little wire rack I mentioned, so you can add more food inside. The thinner basket is only a problem if you like to air fry cheesecakes, custard pies, or larger food items. I like to air fry the marinated pork tenderloin from Trader Joe's, but it's too long for the DoubleStack's basket, so I have to chop it in half first.
This Ninja has a control panel on the right side, which I described as a “pro” for being easy to use. However, this panel pokes out of the side, and it is fixed in place. That means you can’t push this up to a wall on the right side, or fold it away when it’s not in use. The basket handles are also huge. Several inches of space are eaten up by these gigantic protrusions.
Is this air fryer right for you?
This is a great air fryer for multi-person households, folks who air fry often, or those like to cook multiple components at once—basically, their entire meal in the air fryer. You can drop steak bites in one basket and roast peppers and potatoes in the other.
Personally, I live in a two-person household with limited counter space and we air fry in waves (sometimes every day and then we'll skip a couple weeks). The Ninja DoubleStack has been indispensable when preparing dinner parties and Thanksgiving—times when I need to keep the oven available and make lots of side dishes. During the rest of the year though, it just takes up too much space.
If you’re a person who plugs in your air fryer once a week to reheat French fries, then the Ninja DoubleStack XL is definitely overkill. Likewise, if you really have limited counter space, think long and hard about whether you want to eliminate 15 by 11 inches of that real estate. This is not the kind of air fryer you can easily pick up and toss into a cabinet day in and day out. If you are looking for an air fryer that can break down into pieces and stow away, take a look at the Ninja Crispi.
