Review: Ooni Karu 16

Around this time every year, pizza oven madness descends upon me and my husband. It starts out with a simple, “Oh, so-and-so is coming into town? We should make pizza!” We fire up the oven and pick up some mozzarella at the store. It’s so good, so incredibly fast and easy, that next week, I make chicken thighs in the pizza oven instead of on the stovetop.

Then a quick pan of wood-fired Brussels sprouts. Then a salty, bloody, perfectly seared flank steak. Suddenly, it’s noon on a workday and I’m holding a single defrosted salmon fillet from Costco. I'm looking out into the backyard and thinking, should I? Wood-fired salmon for one? No. Calm down. Get some work done.

Cooking with a wood-fired pizza oven has the same intense, meditative quality as toasting marshmallows while you’re camping. With Ooni's latest oven, it’s as easy as using gas. I can pull a few things out of my fridge at 5:30 pm and have dinner cooked by 6 pm. Every one of my friends and family who has been lucky enough to be invited over for dinner has also wanted one of these.

If you have a design that really works, why change it? The Ooni Karu 16 echoes the sea turtle appearance of the company's previous ovens. However, unlike the gleaming stainless steel of the Ooni Pro, the Karu 16 has a temperature-resistant powder-coated finish over a carbon- and stainless-steel shell.

The insulation is astounding. I held my hand a few inches from the surface when the oven was 700 degrees, and only then fearfully touched it with a fingertip. It was fine, only a little warm—important if you have it in the backyard and worry that a stray child or beer-drinking friend might brush up against it.

The Karu 16 is a multi-fuel stove. You can buy Ooni’s gas burner attachment separately, but by default it’s made to be used with either charcoal or wood. Unlike some of its other ovens, the Karu 16 also has a front door that closes with a hook, and a digital thermometer that displays the ambient air temperature. It’s incredibly convenient and almost as accurate as my handheld digital laser thermometer.

Cooking with wood sounds intimidating, and I’m no professional pizzaiolo, but I can get the Ooni started in less than 10 minutes—way faster than I would be able to with charcoal. Ooni sent a box of its firestarters ($20) and a pack of oak sticks ($40). All I have to do is light a firestarter, drop it into the fuel tray at the back, toss a couple of oak sticks on top, and shut the door.

In years past, I’ve also found Stump Chunks ($9) to be an equally fast and effective fire starter. My local hardware store also sells different kinds of wood, but if you have space, I recommend keeping a small hatchet handy for splitting pieces into smaller ones. In any case, make sure the wood you’re using is well-seasoned. In a misguided attempt to save some money, I used some wood that had spent the winter outside on my deck and it was unpleasantly smoky.

Not only is the Karu 16 insanely easy to use, but it's also the first and only pizza oven to be recommended for domestic use by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, the world authority on Naples-style pizza. In addition to approved ingredients—tomatoes, crushed by hand, and preferably from Campania—a Naples-style pizza is distinguished from the more familiar New York–style pizza by its soft, pillowy crust and a softer interior.

Ooni sent a handbook on Neapolitan pies and approved ingredients, but after the first cheese pie came out of the oven, my 6-year-old approvingly said, “This looks just like it came from Domino’s!” My husband and I gave up and started making pizzas the way we like them—a thin, crackly crust and a smorgasbord of toppings, from jarred artichokes to sardines, arugula, and all sorts of other non-approved items.

If you read Ooni’s cookbook, you start to notice a theme. Pretty much every recipe is: “Heat oven up to 500 degrees, preheat the cast-iron pan, pour some oil in, and put in for 10 minutes.” It really is that easy, although of course you can tinker with the amount and type of fuel for desired results. A small hook lets you close the flue (a duct that directs gases from the oven out) for intensely smoky flavor in your veggies and meats; more oxygen results in a bigger fire and more heat.

If you’re interested in cooking other kinds of food besides pizza, I recommend a solid 12-inch cast-iron pan (I've had mine since 2010 and it still looks new!) and a pair of good heat-resistant gloves. Unless you're wearing a fireproof cloak on your hands, you're going to feel that heat if you don't let go of the pan soon, so I set up a cook station near the pizza oven. 

Also, don’t leave the oven unattended or running at 900 degrees for too long without being used. I usually let it burn for 20 minutes to clean any suspicious materials off the pizza stone too.

After using Ooni's ovens, it’s really hard to recommend any other pizza oven. When I think about the amount of labor required to get a huge Roccbox over 400 degrees compared to this simple 10-minute process, I want to cry (for myself). 

Not only are the Ooni ovens attractive, easy to use, and simple to assemble, they're also portable and easy to clean. If you want to dump the ash, the fuel tray slides right out. A scrub brush takes any soot right off the door window. I also don't worry that a kid will jolt the table and accidentally crush themselves to death by knocking the pizza oven off. And I can also forget about dinner until the last minute and still have it ready in time.

So far, the only annoying thing is that the batteries on the digital thermometer need to be replaced more often than you’d think, after about two weeks of cooking every other day. Also, the temperature of the 16-inch cooking surface is uneven by as much as 30 to 40 degrees. It’s much hotter in the back of the oven than the front, but the thermometer gives you a decent approximation—and you need to rotate pizzas and pans in any wood-fired oven, anyway.

If you like cooking outdoors with wood or charcoal, but don’t have the patience or space for a traditional charcoal grill, you really can’t go wrong with a pizza oven. Ooni has several different sizes and styles, depending on your preferred fuel type and the amount of space you have available.

The best indicator that this is a great oven? The fact that all of the (few) guests we’ve hosted this summer have also become infected with our pizza oven madness. Maybe it's contagious.