Ooni 3 Outdoor Pizza Oven Review [2022] - Chef's Resource (2024)

Pizza! Not sure about you, but we love it. We really love it. If we could eat it every day, everywhere, we would.

Pizza has a long history, going back to ancient Rome. But, it wasn’t until after WWII though that the worldwide favorite of today, became famous. In that time, the craft was perfected in Italian pizzerias, but now you can experience the flavor and the joy of delicious pizza, anywhere.

Which brings us to the subject of this Ooni 3 Outdoor Pizza Oven Review. Ooni have created a pizza oven, which is truly portable. Yes, that’s right; you can carry it around with you. But before we take a closer look, let’s find out about the company who make it…

Who are Ooni?

Ooni is an outdoor cooking company that specializes in pizza ovens. Based in Edinburgh, Scotland, they began selling their first model in 2012. The first oven was funded through Kickstarter, and the company have continued with a crowdfunding business model.

Plenty of companies have produced pizza ovens over the years. What’s so special about Ooni is that they were the first to make a portable one. Since their first version, they have stuck to that unique selling point.

The original Ooni was THE first and is still one of the best portable pizza ovens. The Ooni 3 outdoor pizza oven is the latest incarnation. So, let’s check it out…

Design

The Ooni 3 has a fully stainless steel body filled with ceramic fiber insulation.

What does this mean for you?

The outdoors is a dangerous place, especially for metals. Stainless steel is corrosion resistant, so your outdoor oven can live outdoors without turning into a rust bucket. It also looks cool, in our opinion.

Ceramic fiber insulation is a lightweight choice to keep the heat inside the oven. Effective on the low end up to 1260°F or 682°C, it’s well capable of keeping the heat from this oven in. And, as we’re about to see, heat is the key to a perfect pizza.

Inside there is a cordierite pizza stone. Cordierite is a great choice for a number of reasons, which we’ll be explaining fully late in this review.

The final piece is the door handle, which is birchwood.

Mechanism

In the rear, there is a small hopper that you fill with the wood pellets. The pellets are released into the back of the oven where they burn. A vent behind and the chimney in the front allows airflow that forces the heat towards the cooking pizza.

This is important because a pizza is more than just the base. Cooking a pizza is difficult for exactly this reason. The base doesn’t want to cook like the toppings.

The solution lies with the stone and the airflow. The stone keeps a very high even temperature underneath in order to bake and rise the dough. Meanwhile, the hot, but slightly cooler, hot air above, cooks the toppings without burning them.

High Temperature

Real pizza requires very high heat.

Why?

Because it’s the heat that allows the dough to rise.Pizza is a flatbread, and it contains yeast, but it isn’t baked for hours and hours. So, the mechanism for rising is the expansion of gas in the dough. That occurs best at a high heat.

That’s the first reason. The second is to do with the toppings, especially the cheese. If the cheese hasn’t melted, you haven’t made a pizza.

Extremes of heat…

A true Italian wood-fired brick oven might reach 800°Celsius. But, remember those are designed to cook multiple pizzas at a commercial pace. At home for one pie at a time, you don’t need such extremes.

The Ooni gets up to 932°F or 500°C, which is more than enough for a solo pizza. What’s more, it only takes 10 minutes to get there. Once heated, you can cook a Neapolitan style pizza in just one minute.

Best Pizza Stone

Another important factor in pizza making is the evenness of the heat. Particularly on the base of the pizza. You don’t want a mish-mash of cooked and undercooked pizza, do you?

Pizza is traditionally cooked in a brick oven. That means it’s cooked on a ceramic base.

What are the Benefits of This?

Ceramics are excellent retainers and distributors of heat. The benefits are even heat distribution and moisture absorption. These combine to make sure the base is cooked evenly.The Ooni comes with a cordierite stone baking board to allow you to enjoy the same benefits. Cordierite is a ceramic prized for its thermal shock resistance.

All ceramic pizza ‘stones’ provide heat retention and even distribution, but many don’t have longevity. Due to thermal shock, that’s the sudden heating and cooling of a substance, many ceramics can easily crack. Cordierite doesn’t suffer from this, making it the best pizza stone choice.

Wood Fired

The traditional fuel used in pizza making is wood. The brick ovens in Italian pizzerias are stoked with wood. They produce perfect crispy, smoky crusts, and you can too…

This Ooni runs on 100% hardwood pellets. Well, realistically, it can run on whichever wood pellets you fill it with. Thismeans you can recreate the smoky flavor imparted by the wood of a traditional wood-fired brick oven. There are a number of specialized pellets available on the market today. Hickory for pork, cherry for chicken, you name it, you can get it.

If you don’t care for that smoky wood-fired flavor Ooni also offers a gas burner attachment. It’s not included, though.

Portability

We mentioned that you could take the Ooni with you, and we weren’t joking. The Ooni 3 is so portable you can even take it camping.Weighing in at just 27.5 lbs or 12 kgs, it’s reasonably lightweight. As well as being lightweight, the Ooni is compact. The dimensions are 23 x 17 x 28 in. or 58 x 43 x 71 cm.

What to make of all those numbers?

Well, they’re almost within cabin baggage restrictions and certainly no bigger than a regular suitcase. However, we don’t recommend trying to fly with it.

Ooni exists to make pizza ovens portable. That’s why the chimney is removable, and the legs are foldable. So, even though it may look awkward to move when set up, it easily breaks down for transport.

Best Camping Pizza Oven

You might think that pizza isn’t really a camping food, but you’d be wrong. The best pizza has very few ingredients and isn’t hard to put together, nor does it need a long time to cook. The complicated part is getting the right temperature for cooking.

With the Ooni 3, the final roadblock to pizza on a campsite has been removed. Easy to transport and with the high heat needed for a delicious pie. Go forth my pizzaiolos and pizzaiolas, go forth, and pizza where no one dared pizza before.

More than justPizza (as if Pizza wasn’t enough!)

What if you’re fed up with pizza? We know, not likely, right? But let’s just say the day comes when you want a change, what can you do?

Well, the Ooni 3 is a pizza oven. The important word being ‘oven.’ That means it can cook anything an oven can. Roast meat, roast vegetables, meatloaf, etc. etc…

The oven comes with a pizza-making guide containing recipes for dough and instructions on using the oven. Ooni also have a YouTube channel full of videos for all kinds of pizza and various breads. There’s even a shakshuka instructional.

Negatives

One disappointment in purchasing an Ooni is the lack of inclusion of a decent pizza peel. Don’t get us wrong they don’t leave you hanging without a peel at all. However, the one included doesn’t have a handle. But, if a better quality peel is what you’re after, check out our reviews of the Best Pizza Peels.

Something else to consider is there’s no inbuilt temperature monitor. This is a major deficit that you will need to rectify. As we mentioned, the temperature is critical to pizza perfection. Yet again, we can help out with our reviews of the Best Oven Thermometers and the Best Instant Read Meat Thermometers currently available.

Neapolitan style, not deep dish…

Next, be aware the specifications and promotional material are all about traditional Neapolitan style pizza. Don’t expect to be able to cook a deep dish Chicago style pie without some adaptation.

And one final point, remember this oven is designed for 12-inch pies. If you want more pizza, you’ll need to refill the pellets and wait for the oven to heat up again. Ooni do have larger ovens, but obviously, they aren’t as portable.

Ooni 3 Outdoor Pizza Oven Review Pros and Cons

More Great Pizza Products

Looking for some more portable options? If so, check out our reviews of the Best Portable Pizza Ovenson the market 2024. You may also be interested in our reviews of the Best Pizza Stones and the Best Canned Pizza Sauce currently available.

Ooni 3 Outdoor Pizza Oven Review Conclusion

To buy or not to buy?

If you love pizza as much as we do, just knowing the Ooni 3 exists will bring a smile to your heart. Should you buy one, though? As always, it depends on what you’re looking for.

If you want the best portable pizza oven to recreate pizzeria-style pies at home and on the road, then yes. You could get a stone and try making one in your oven or barbecue, but it won’t be as good. The Ooni 3 excels at portable pizza.

As we’ve seen in our review of the Ooni 3 outdoor pizza oven, it’s custom made it for this purpose.

Happy pizza making.