Ninja Sizzle Smokeless Indoor Grill & Griddle GR101

A Grill That Is Only a Grill

Ninja's better-known indoor grill, the Foodi AG301, is a five-function machine that grills, air fries, roasts, bakes and dehydrates. The Sizzle is the opposite proposition: a grill and a griddle, two plates, one dial, nothing else. It weighs under eight pounds and holds six burgers or six pancakes, which is the same practical capacity as machines several times its bulk.

That focus produced better reviews than the multi-cooker did. Real Homes' Paige Cerulli scored it 4.5 out of 5, calling it "a handy and versatile option that's ideal for kitchens with limited space. Weighing less than eight pounds, you can easily store it away in a cupboard when not in use. Its grill and griddle plates mean you get double the use out of the machine, rather than having to buy a separate grill and griddle." Girls Can Grill, who cooked on it independently, opened with the specification that matters most in this category: "It creates perfect grill marks, just like an outdoor grill."

No Smoke, Across Six Different Foods

The smokeless claim gets tested honestly here because Cerulli cooked a range of things with different fat behaviour and reported on each. Kielbasa: "I noticed absolutely no smoke while cooking it." Cheeseburgers, which render fat continuously: "I didn't notice any smoke, though there was more splatter when cooking the burgers than the kielbasa." Her overall conclusion covers everything she made: "I never observed smoke during any of these tests."

She also had a personal reason to be paying attention, which lends the observation weight: "I particularly appreciated the smokeless design, since my smoke detectors are linked to my house alarm system and cooking can set them off and potentially trigger a call to the fire department." That is the real-world version of the test. It is worth setting this against Serious Eats' broader finding on the category, from a separate test of eight smokeless grills: "No indoor grill is truly smokeless, but some were less smoky." The Sizzle was not in that test group, but the honest reading of both sources together is that this one performed at the good end of a scale that never reaches zero by design.

How Ninja Actually Does It

The Sizzle's smoke control is not a fan, a water tray or an infrared element. It is a set of temperatures. Cerulli explains the mechanism as Ninja describes it: "According to Ninja, the smokeless design is the result of specific, chef-provided cooking temperature recommendations for each food." Girls Can Grill confirms where those live: "Ninja's chefs provide recommended temperatures for each food to reduce smoke and splattering. These are in the manual and pictured on the front of the grill."

This is a genuinely different approach from the perforated-grate strategy Serious Eats identified as the most effective hardware solution, and it has an obvious dependency: it only works if you follow the chart. Cerulli did, and got no smoke — but she also found the recommendations imperfect in the other direction: "I found that these temperatures were, if anything, a little bit high, such as in the case of the pancakes." So the guidance keeps fat below its smoke point, sometimes at the cost of being hotter than a given food wants. Ignore the chart and cook a fatty cut at maximum, and the smokeless claim is no longer being made about what you are doing.

Ninja Publishes a Ceiling, Not a Range

Anyone comparing spec sheets will find two different low-end temperatures quoted for the Sizzle — Real Homes lists a "200 to 500 degree Fahrenheit temperature range" and Girls Can Grill's spec box says "250-500F degrees." Neither figure comes from Ninja. The company's own quick start guide states only a maximum: "TEMPERATURE DIAL — Reach temperatures up to 500°F." There is no published minimum anywhere in Ninja's product documentation, so the honest specification for this grill is 500°F at the top and a continuous dial below it.

What Ninja does publish instead is a chart of recommended settings by food, and it doubles as the smoke-control instruction. The four charted stops are 325°F for burgers and thicker barbecue sauces, 375°F for steak, chicken, salmon, frozen meats and anything marinated or sauced, 400°F for hot dogs and bacon, and 500°F for vegetables, fruit, pizza and seafood. Recipes in the same guide call for 350°F and 450°F, so the dial is continuous rather than clicking between those four positions.

Seven Minutes, and No Way to Know When

The single most consistent complaint about the Sizzle is one of the simplest possible design gaps. Both reviewers hit it independently. Cerulli: "The grill requires seven minutes to preheat, and a power indicator light signals when the unit is on. There is no indicator to signal that the unit has reached its optimal temperature, so you have to keep track of time yourself." Girls Can Grill: "The only feature I wish this grill had was a timer or a tone to tell me when 7 minutes was up."

It has a downstream effect too. Cerulli's one cooking failure came from exactly this: "I did run into a stickiness issue when cooking eggs on the griddle. I suspect I added the eggs before the griddle was fully preheated, as both eggs stuck to the griddle when I tried to flip them. I had no issues flipping the eggs a second time, though, possibly because the griddle was hotter at that point." The Sizzle has no audible alert to signal that it has finished preheating, which is the one convenience feature it most needs.

Ninja states the causal link explicitly in that guide, and it is the clearest statement of how this grill works: "Our chef-designed temperature settings maximize grill flavors and textures while minimizing smoke. Cooking food at a higher temperature than recommended will result in more smoke and food having a burnt, acrid flavor." That is an unusually candid piece of manufacturer copy — it tells you the smokeless behaviour is conditional on following the chart, and warns you what happens if you do not.

The Griddle Plate Earns Its Keep

The second plate is not a token inclusion. Cerulli tested it on crepes, which are about as demanding a release test as a nonstick surface faces: "After preheating the griddle, I poured batter for the six small crepes, as instructed. By the time I finished pouring the batter for the sixth crepe, the first crepe was already ready to be flipped. This was very easy, thanks to the non-stick griddle plate. I used no grease in preparing the plate, but was able to easily flip every crepe with no sticking." She went in sceptical about pancakes and reported that "this griddle proved otherwise."

It is not perfectly even. "In cooking the crepes and pancakes, I discovered that the outer corners cooked more slowly than the inner edges and center of the griddle. While the heating coils are arranged to promote an even cook throughout the entire griddle surface, I found that there is some minor unevenness in the heating." Notably she only saw this with batter, which sits still and browns visibly — it did not show up on the grill plate with kielbasa or burgers, where food gets moved and turned.

The Perforated Lid Does Less Than You Would Expect

The mesh lid is one of the Sizzle's headline features and the reviews are lukewarm about it. Cerulli tested the use case Ninja suggests, closing it to melt cheese on a burger: "I didn't find that the lid made much of a difference with the cheese, as the cheese melted slowly and heat didn't really seem to build up with the lid closed. The closed lid may have slightly reduced splatter, but it's perforated, so some splatter still came through the lid."

That is the inherent compromise of a mesh design. A solid lid — like the Hamilton Beach 25361's — traps heat, steam and splatter together, which speeds cooking and contains mess but also steams what is underneath. A perforated one lets moisture escape so you keep a dry sear, at the cost of doing very little to hold heat in or splatter out. Neither is wrong; the Sizzle's just does less than the presence of a lid implies. Plan on turning burgers up rather than lidding them if you want cheese melted quickly.

Living With It

Setup is nothing: "There is zero assembly with the Ninja Sizzle," Girls Can Grill reports — take it out, fit a plate, turn the dial. Ninja asks for a burn-in run at 400°F for ten minutes before first use to clear packaging residue, and Cerulli found "a very mild plastic odor that dissipated within about three minutes." Cleaning is straightforward but not fully hands-off: the mesh lid can go in the dishwasher, while the plates are best hand washed, and Girls Can Grill recommends a first pass while the grill is still warm to keep food from setting.

The most annoying ergonomic gap is one Real Homes lists among its reasons to avoid: "No storage option for the unused plate." You always have one plate out of the machine and nowhere designed to put it. On an appliance whose entire pitch is that it saves space by replacing two, having a loose 14-inch plate to find a home for is a real oversight.

One Appliance for Two Jobs

The Sizzle makes most sense in a kitchen with a genuine space constraint and a genuine need for both surfaces. If you would otherwise own a grill and a griddle, this is one under-eight-pound box instead of two, and both plates were rated well by testers who used them properly. It is also the most defensible pick on this page for anyone whose smoke alarm is a live problem, because two independent reviewers watched for smoke across a spread of foods and did not see any.

Pass on it if you want a machine that tells you when it is ready — the seven-minute silent preheat will annoy you daily. Pass on it if you want a lid that builds heat, which the mesh design deliberately does not. And if you only ever grill, the Zojirushi EB-CC15 Indoor Electric Grill and the Hamilton Beach Searing Grill with Lid Window 25361 both cost less and were the top two finishers in a head-to-head test of eight smokeless grills.