By the Cottage Coach
Cooking every meal outdoors, all weekend long, for the Outdoor Cooking Challenge has been a breeze so far. Breakfast was the big production. Lunch was about keeping things fast and not losing the afternoon. But dinner? Dinner is where this gets personal for me.
Because for years, I’ve been chasing one thing at the cottage: the perfect homemade pizza.
My pizza obsession
I’m not exaggerating when I say “chasing.” Borderline obsessive is more accurate. I thought I’d cracked it with a tabletop propane BBQ at one point, but the heat just wasn’t right. And for restaurant-quality pizza, heat is everything. You need uniform, high heat. You need a proper pizza stone. And if you can add wood-fired flavour at the flick of a button on top of all that, the results are pizza perfection.
That’s exactly what the Ninja FlexFlame™ Outdoor Cooking System’s Artisan Pizza Maker gives you: a 16-inch pizza, done in about five minutes, no turning required. After a quick preheat, you toss the pizza on, rotate it once or twice, and it’s done. It cooks faster than your guests can toss toppings onto the next one.
The result is the closest thing I’ve had to a real pizza oven at the cottage, and it will blow your guests’ minds.
One grill, every job
Enjoying dinner outdoors at the cottage is bigger than the meal itself, and the FlexFlame’s other modes are what make a full evening outside actually work.
Its grill is the obvious go-to for steaks, chicken, veggies, and the usual lineup. But don’t overlook the roast mode. It’s a set-it-and-forget-it feature, perfect for bigger cuts or even a whole chicken. Combine roasting with proper temperature control, and you basically have a portable outdoor oven sitting on your deck.
And then there’s the grill-and-smoke combo, which might be my actual favourite. You get extra flavour without needing a separate smoker setup, and you can play around with different pellets depending on what you’re cooking. It’s the kind of thing that takes a normal dinner and makes it feel like an occasion.
Underneath all of it is CyclonicHeat-IQ™, which creates even, consistent heat with no hot spots and no babysitting. Pair that with the ProChef™ Wireless Thermometer, and you’ve taken the guesswork out of the entire evening.
Fireside ambiance
By the time the first pizza comes off the FlexFlame, the Ninja Fireside360™ is already lit. It’s smokeless, it starts instantly, and it creates 360° heat for the whole group, giving you a fire-pit atmosphere without the effort, extending dinner into the perfect cottage evening.
The perfect outdoor setup
When every single meal happens outside for an entire weekend, you feel like there’s never a wasted moment. Everyone’s together, you’re never missing moments by heading inside to a cramped kitchen, and the kids start getting genuinely interested in how things are cooked. Spending all of that extra time outdoors with my family reminds me why I head up north in the first place.
The verdict
So does Ninja’s outdoor lineup earn the Cottage Coach Seal of Approval? Easily. The bar is simple: does it make life easier, keep people outside longer, and actually improve the experience without just being another collection of gadgets? This lineup amplifies the cottage experience instead of complicating it. I expected the FlexFlame to handle a few key meals. Instead, it became my go-to for almost everything. It’s the Swiss Army Knife of BBQs, and I can’t imagine my cottage without it.
Shop the Ninja FlexFlame™ and the full Ninja outdoor lineup exclusively at canadiantire.ca.