Ninja Foodi’s are vastly becoming popular as they are produced by the brand Ninja who pioneered juicers and blenders and now have created a pressure cooker to make cooking easier.
A Ninja Foodi can start to smell if the appliance is not thoroughly cleaned and cared for after each use. Bacteria and food can get stuck in the seal and start to smell, you can prevent this by cleaning the rubber seal or by replacing it. Other causes are plastic smells when the appliance is new.
In this article I am going to talk about the causes of the bad smells in your Ninja Foodi, what you can do to prevent it and anything else you need to know about caring for your Ninja Foodi.
Why Does My Ninja Foodi Smell?
Below I am going to talk about some of the main causes of smells in your Ninja Foodi and why it happens.
Dirty Rubber Seal
As the Ninja Foodi functions as a pressure cooker (amongst other things), it has a rubber seal in place to ensure that pressure is kept constant. This is the case with anything at all that needs to maintain a seal, from pressure cookers to vacuum flasks.
During the course of using your Ninja Foodi, there’s a chance that the rubber seal will get dirty. During regular maintenance of your appliance, you should always make sure to clean the seal. If you have neglected to clean the seal for a while, it may actually be easier for you to replace it and thereby make sure you’re using a clean one.
Replacing a rubber seal is a fairly straightforward task, and can be accomplished by most people with the help, perhaps, of a video tutorial. To buy the rings themselves, Ninja sells them in two-packs for £10 – great value for a useful item.
Dish Soap Still In The Pot
Some people report that after cleaning their Ninja Foodi and using it again, their food and pot have an inherent smell of dish soap. This is obviously not a good thing, as keeping food and soap separate is always a wise choice. There are a couple of things that you can do to ensure that you remove any dish soap from your Ninja Foodi.
Firstly, you can simply wash it again. Using the same dish soap and a sponge, gently scrub at the pot itself and you’ll likely remove any dish soap residue. Once you’ve done that, make sure to rinse out the pot several times to make sure you don’t have any soap residue within it.
Alternatively, you can get other soaps that will be able to remove the offending dish soap very easily. A number of different supermarkets and online stores sell chemicals that are designed to function as vegetable washes. Typically they are derived from citric acid, meaning that they can easily and gently remove any dirt from veg in your kitchen without being toxic.
Using a vegetable wash along these lines is sure to remove any trace of dish soap left in your pot, allowing you to cook without the dish soap aroma.
Protective Coating Still In Place
During the process of manufacturing non-stick pots and pans, many manufacturers apply a protective coating to their products to maintain the integrity of the non-stick surface.
This is a necessary part of the process used to make these products, and it’s typically harmless too, as the coating will be removed by either heating or washing.
If you smell a plastic-like smell the first or second time you use your Ninja Foodi, then this is likely what you’re smelling. In order to avoid that, you simply have to wash the non-stick bowl itself. Alternatively, the smell will go away on its own after a short while, but you will be allowing those chemicals into your food.
What Can Cause My Ninja Foodi To Smell?
As we are looking at what the smell can be brought on by you might also want to know what really causes it, that way you can be aware of what makes your Ninja Foodi smell and how to prevent it.
Food Bacteria On The Seal
During the course of cooking twitch your Ninja Foodi, you may experience a few spills or splashes onto the seal of the lid. As it is a pressure cooker, the Ninja Foodi must have this seal in order to maintain a good internal pressure.
If you don’t regularly clean the seal around the lid of your Ninja Foodi, then you may be at risk of food building up in that spot. As food builds up, it creates an attractive and interesting location for bacteria to live. Consider it: bacteria like a warm, damp place to live, and what better place than within the seal of a pressure cooker?
If food buildup results in bacteria growth over time, then you’ll be subject to some rather unpleasant smells. Those smells are the result of the bacteria metabolizing any of the food that it can find. For that reason, a good way to prevent this is to simply avoid any spills or splashes in the first place.
On a number of occasions, however, that’s much easier said than done.
Plastic Fumes On Any Component
The body of the Ninja Foodi, along with a large number of internal components, is made up of heat-resistant plastic. This even includes the ball-bearings which allow the fan on the inside of the ninja foodi to rotate!
This plastic has been a godsend for the food industry, as it has meant that you can make appliances that will maintain tolerable heat in spite of any extremes of temperature within them.
When heat-resistant plastic is heated and cooled the first few times after it has been made, it will release fumes. That’s just the way things are with the current grade of plastic that we use in our products. Upon heating for the first time, a number of different components both within and without the Ninja Foodi may smell of plastic for a short while.
After the first or second time that you heat and cool the appliance, however, you should notice that this stops.
How To Stop My Ninja Foodi From Smelling
Now we know what makes the Ninja Foodi smell and what causes the smells to be created we can look at what you can do to prevent it.
Clean It Regularly
Regularly cleaning your Ninja Foodi is the greatest way to prevent any smells from occuring by far in advance of whenever they might happen. The number one cause of smells from food-related products is bacterial growth and the resulting metabolization of food.
If you make sure to use dish soap and hot water during the process of cleaning your Ninja Foodi on a regular basis, then you will stop any bacterial growth in its tracks, preventing smells entirely.
Thoroughly Clean It When You First Get It
When you first purchase a Ninja Foodi, you may feel compelled to open it up straight away and get started before anyone can stop you. We completely get that. The thing is, however, that you might want to clean it first. The protective coating that is on top of the non-stick materials will still be in place until you have thoroughly cleaned it.
We’d recommend cleaning your Ninja Foodi with hot soapy water twice before first using it if you wish to completely avoid that plastic-like smell.
Replace The Seal Every Six Months
In a number of products where seals are used, they’re considered serviceable parts. This means that they will, over time, lose their inherent quality, and may start not maintaining the integrity of a seal. This is due to the natural properties of rubber, as it begins to harden over time.
In order to avoid generating any kind of smells with your Ninja Foodi’s rubber seal, we’d recommend replacing it on a regular basis. While six months may not be ideal for you, it’s certainly a good place to start.
As well as replacing the seal to ensure it remains as clean as possible, we’d recommend removing the seal of your ninja foodi, cleaning it, and replacing it once a month or so. This will mean that you won’t see much (if anything) in the way of bacterial growth over the course of a lifetime of use.
Make Sure To Rinse After Cleaning The Non-Stick Pot
As we spoke about earlier in the article, the non-stick pot can have a tendency to hold on to the smell of dish soap after it has been washed. This smell can be imparted onto your food if you’re not careful, so we’d recommend cleaning it properly every single time for this reason alone.
To make sure that you’re cleaning the non-stick pot well, wash it with dish soap once, and rinse out the suds completely using hot, soapy water. Then, using fresh water, wash away any suds that you can see, making sure to cover every inch of the inside surface.
Cleaning the pot in that way will greatly cut down on any dish soap residue within the pot, allowing you to ensure your food doesn’t pick up that smell or taste.
Bring The Foodi Up To Temperature And Let It Cool Once Or Twice
The entire body of the Ninja Foodi comes with a thin protective coating that is applied in the factory to ensure that the appliance itself is protected during the course of sale and transport. This coating is non-harmful but can lead to a slightly plastic smell when heated and burned off.
To avoid combining that smell with your food, we’d recommend heating and cooling the Ninja Foodi once or twice without any food in it. The coating will burn off harmlessly, allowing you to use the appliance safe in the knowledge that the coating is no longer present.
Hi all! I’m Cora Benson, and I’ve been blogging about food, recipes and things that happen in my kitchen since 2019.