delicious. reviews: Ooni Koda 2 Max pizza oven

Leading pizza oven manfacturer Ooni has gone big with the Koda 2 Max – it’s 24” wide (spacious enough to cook two pizzas). But do you need a pizza oven that big? We put it through rigorous patio testing for this review to see if its hefty charms could convince us.

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delicious. reviews: Ooni Koda 2 Max pizza oven

Star rating: ★★★★☆
Best for: People who have plenty of cooking space outdoors and lots of people to cook for
Price: £899

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What’s good about it?

It’s big. Very big. That roominess means if you’re having a pizza party, you can make huge pizzas, or cook two regular ones at the same time. Each half of the oven has a separate gas burner, so you could cook a pizza on one side and some veg or a steak, perhaps, at a lower temperature on the other.

The Koda 2 Max has a temperature screen too, with sensors on each side of the oven. You can cycle through three temperature zones: left, right, and the average temperature of the oven.

Ooni recommends buying its £50 infrared thermometer to check the pizza stone temperature, which traditionally lags behind the ambient temperature measured by the thermometer. I didn’t do this, but found a neapolitan-style pizza cooked perfectly in one minute when the ambient temp hit 400ºC.

Nerdier reviewers than I have plotted the stone-versus-ambient-temperature readings and confirmed they’re near identical, so it looks like you can just trust the temperature on the screen and save £50.

My very first pizza was a cracker: leopard-spotted, puffed on top, crisp underneath: all the things you buy a pizza oven for. Bonus feature: perhaps because of the ‘unique tapered flames’ Ooni advertises, I found I didn’t need to turn the pizza round when cooking it.

It was first time lucky with the Koda 2 Max for Les

 

Hubris was swiftly followed, invevitably, by nemesis and on my second attempt I discovered how the calzone must have been invented (when the pizza got partially stuck on the peel, ending up with me having to fold it over itself).

As well as the inbuilt ambient thermometer, the Ooni has two probe thermometers you can plug into the temperature screen (and also monitor on your phone by Bluetooth, along with the ambient temperature, on the Ooni app). Now obviously no one’s going to put a probe in a pizza, so I felt duty bound to do a second test with a spatchcocked chicken.

This worked better than I expected – beautifully, in fact. Working with one burner on, I cooked the chicken at about 170-190ºC, turning it now and again and giving it the odd baste. I found I got a beautifully crisp skin – perhaps because the open oven doesn’t trap in moisture like a regular oven. The probe thermometer did its job, although because it’s attached to the oven, you can’t leave it in while the chicken rests, if you’re the kind of nerdy person who enjoys seeing how much the temperature continues to rise while it’s resting (guilty).

Spatchcocked chicken turned out a treat

 

So if you’re thinking ‘is it worth buying a big oven just for pizzas?’, let me reassure you it can cook other things too – in fact now I’ve spatchcocked a chicken, I’m wondering why you’d cook it any other way (it takes only 45 minutes to roast to perfection). Joints of meat, particularly beef, are next on my list…

What’s not so good?

The oven doesn’t heat up as quickly as smaller models, because – well, there’s more to heat up. It took me about about 40 minutes to get to the magic 400ºC (more like 50 when the weather got chillier). That said, I could see myself using this opportunity to cook other things while the temperature rises (a bit like leaving things to cook on a charcoal barbecue as it’s slowly cooling down).

The Koda 2 Max’s temperature screen in action

 

This isn’t a criticism, but it’s worth noting that, because the oven is so heavy (38kg with the extra-thick stones inside), you’ll need two people to get the huge box where you want it. Once it was on the patio, though, I managed to assemble the oven on my own. You have to turn it upside-down to put the legs on – top tip: keep it on cardboard at that point so it doesn’t get scratched.

Ooni sensibly recommends you keep the detachable thermometer screen indoors when you’re not using it. That means, though, when you come to plug it in again, you have to make sure you connect the correct cables for the left and right sides of the oven. It’s a minor annoyance, but to save you peering underneath the oven each time or consulting the manual, I recommend sticking a bit of masking tape to each cable with ‘L’ and ‘R’ (or ‘A’ and ‘B’).

Les’s hack: masking tape on the thermometer cables

 

Unlike some other brands, the Ooni doesn’t come with any added extras. A pizza peel (the big paddle thing you can assemble the pizza and shove it into the oven on) is essential. I’d recommend the Ooni 14” (35cm) perforated peel – the perforations seem to help it not stick, though it does cost a hefty £70.

The oven’s sheer size means you mightn’t have an existing table big enough to fit it on (it will need to be 80cm x 80cm) and once you’ve put it on a table and inserted the heavy pizza stones, you aren’t going to want to shift it around again. Ideally you’d buy the large Ooni Modular Table (£249) on lockable castors, so you have some flexibility and can wheel the oven out of the way when it’s not in use (or Google stainless steel work tables for a cheaper option). A cover isn’t supplied either, so that’s another expense.

My favourite features

The sheer size, the hefty pizza stones for excellent, even cooking and the built-in, accurate temperature gauge are the game-changers with this oven.

Overall verdict

If you have the space and cash, love pizzas and relish setting up your production line for a full-on pizza party, you’re going to love the Ooni Koda 2 Max.

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