Pit Boss Pro Series 1150 Review | Pit Boss 1150 Pro Series Pellet Grill Review

i'm david with the barbecue lab and today we're going to take a deep dive into the new pit boss pro lineup the pitboss pro series 2 1150 is a large format pellet smoker that you can find at a big box store here in the united states we're going to fire it up and put it through its paces coming up [Music] let's start with a little bit of product information the 1150 tells us that its name that it has 1150 square inches of cooking space available on the surface now that comes in two different racks the primary cooking surface has 697 square inches and then there's a second tier above that that has right around 400 or low 400 square inches now the 1150 has a temperature range of 180 on the low end all the way up to 500 degrees on the high end now once this unit is assembled you have a height of 52 inches a width of 62 inches and a depth of 32 inches so when you look at this unit if you're trying to figure out if it'll fit on your porch just grab your tape measure see if that'll work but i think that you'll be happy with the size of this unit now it weighs about 188 pounds which means it is no light grill if you're used to having a weber kettle or if you're used to something on the smaller side this is a hefty grill and it has some pretty heavy metal on there so you're not going to be looking at a really lightweight grill with this but it is heavy duty just like pit boss says on a lot of their marketing now one of the features that i want to make sure i call out on this one is that it is direct grilling capable you can actually pull a lever on the grill and open the sear plate which exposes the fire pot to the cooking surface meaning you can get direct flames to the cooking surface when you're doing a cook on this unit now that's something that's unique in the space there's not many grill manufacturers that actually put the ability to direct sear above the flame pot and that's something that i really like about this unit another feature i want to make sure that i mention is the hopper on this unit will carry up to 32 pounds of pellets that's actually a substantial amount of pellets in comparison to many of the other grills on the market so you can be able to put a 20 pound bag and a half in this grill and know that you can cook overnight without any problem now let's cover the assembly of this grille now it took us about an hour to assemble and there were two of us that were working on the assembly together because when you actually try to take the legs and attach it to the body it's a kind of an odd angle in that the legs themselves are kind of sculpted and the bottom of the body is sculpted and when you're trying to put those two pieces together and get the angle of the screws just right it's kind of difficult so i really recommend a second person help you assemble this grill but the main body comes already assembled for you and most of the accessories and the legs are stuck inside the cooking chamber so it's well packed it's really nice that they have this put together for you in most part but just the second person to put those legs on would be a nice move now with any pellet grill the manufacturer always recommends that you do an initial burn off of the unit before you actually cook any kind of food on it now on this unit pit boss recommends that we set the grill to 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes and once you've done that then you're free to cook away all those oils have been cooked off now when it came to grilling on this unit because grilling is something we can talk about on this pellet smoker because of the direct access to flame we would grill zucchini as a side dish all the time in addition to that we also grilled some skirt steak fajitas and skirt steak is a really really thin piece of meat that you can put directly over the flame and it's not even on there long enough to get flame marks for the most part but this grill did put flame marks on that meat you actually were able to see where the flames got through in the say two to three minutes per side that we cooked that meat and it did a really great job and there were quite a few other things that we grilled on this unit but i want to talk about for a second what this really excels at in being a smoker it does a great job grilling but really let's be honest this is really a pellet smoker first in a grill second yes you can grill on it but if i'm gonna be choosing to grill versus smoke i'm gonna smoke on this unit first now one of the things that we did was our competition chicken thigh recipe and we went ahead and threw that on there and gave it a shot and see how it would go and it did a fantastic job everything from cooking it when we have the the chicken thighs actually in the pan in the butter bath did a fantastic job with that from pulling them out and saucing them and putting them back on the grill to set the sauce did a great job there as well so we really were really happy with how it did on chicken thighs also i love to cook a good chili verde and we turn that into burritos but the chili verde i could cook on the stove inside but i really like cooking it outdoors on a smoker to infuse that smoky flavor we'll often serve that chili verde over a yellow rice for the for dinner but then one of my favorite things to do with that is the next day turn it into green chili pork burritos and we take that pork and that chili verde slathered over the top of a burrito and it just has a smoky goodness when you cook it on the smoker that you don't get inside and i got to tell you you guys will love that recipe now speaking of recipes if you want to learn that recipe we're going to be sharing that later this spring and early summer on our channel make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out because that one is a banger another dish that we prepared on this was chicken enchiladas now we love doing enchiladas probably once every week or two and in doing that it's another thing we could throw in the oven and it would be fine but i got to tell you it is dynamite when you put it on the smoker and infuse the sauce and infuse the burritos and the cheese with that smoky flavor the pit boss 1150 did a great job with our chicken enchiladas we also smoked a brisket flat for some friends of ours where they were able to do a door dash with us they dropped off the brisket we smoked it they came back later in the evening and they got to have brisket and we got to test the grill so with that brisket flat i got to tell you this did a fantastic job of actually getting that fat to render and having a nice bark on the outside i was really pleased with how this handled the smoking of that brisket now when it comes to storage of the pit boss we've actually had this outside for two months so what you're looking at is this unit has been outside without a cover for two months and then in the middle of the midwest winter now so a cover doesn't come with this unit but it is an accessory that you can pick up in addition to the grill if you want to have it outside and make sure it maintains its nice look when the elements come calling in that two-month period we haven't had any surface rust and we also haven't had any moisture come up under the screen of the controller which are two common things that you'll find with electric pellet grills in the outside space the pit boss 1150 comes with a five year warranty so you really don't have to worry about any problems on this grill for at least five years now with each review that we do we like to cover what we loved and also some opportunities for improvements one of the things that we love on this unit is the 32 pound pellet hopper there's a nice clear window in the front so you can see how many pellets are remaining in your hopper as well as a nice little slot to the side where you can keep your probes and storage so you don't have to take them inside and lose them potentially between cooks i like that little storage capability inside the hopper and that's the first grill i've really run into this on i also really like the sear capability of this grill to be able to pull this handle and open the sear plate a lot of cooks i'll be cooking something indirectly and i'll cook it so that it's not directly over the fire pot but then to the end i want to sear i love that i can crank the grill up pull that arm and put the meat right over the sear plate to be able to get a nice sear with real flames getting to the meat another thing i want to point out is the handle that you have for moving this grill around quite a few grills that we've worked with have a very thin very small handle for pulling it around the deck a patio this grill has a substantial handle for moving this thing around and i don't worry that i'm going to break it i don't worry that i'm going to bend it this thing is built to be moved around the patio so i love that handle and it's one of the most robust that we've found in any unit especially in this price range another thing that we really like is the smoke it app now this app allows you to control the temperature of the grill when you're not around it gives you the ability to monitor the temperatures on the probes that you have in the unit and it will also help you connect online to get recipes from the pitboss website now this grill comes with two probes standard and you can connect up to four probes on this grill so there are four ports on the front of the controller allowing you to have multiple options when you ever want to cook multiple pieces of meat at the same time there's also a probe port in the side of the cooking chamber that allows you to stick your probes through without having to lock them and potentially damage your probes by shutting them in the door if you haven't had a grill that has a probe port you're going to love it if you decide to pick up this unit because it allows you to make sure that your probes have the longest life possible by not potentially kinking them in the door by shutting it and opening it every time that you have to go access your meat now another thing that we love is the overall space for cooking when you look at the size of this chamber we're talking about almost 700 inches of cooking space on the main level that doesn't even include over 400 400 some square inches on the second level as well there's just a lot of room for cooking meat if you're gonna cook pork butts no problem you can put eight maybe even ten on this unit without a problem so that i have to say i love how much space there is on this cooker especially in this price range and while we're talking about price i mean that's something we have to bring up too the current retail price for this unit is 599 dollars and at the 599 600 mark there aren't many smokers that have this amount of space or this heavy of metal in that price range so i mean there's this is a real value in the space another thing that i'm really happy with is the 10 degree incremental control up to 300 degrees when you actually start at the 180 all the way up to 300 you can control that in 10 degree increments and i like that because there's quite a few other grilles in the market that only have 25 or 50 degree increments you can cook with i also like the side shelf the front shelf and the top of the pellet hopper because it gives me three places to put things when we're cooking if i have a tray of meat i can come out set it on the side shelf or if i have another tray of maybe vegetables or sides i can put it on top of the pellet hopper and anything that i'm working with directly in the grill i just pop up the front shelf and you're good to go a lot of grills don't have that much space to be able to put things when you're cooking that's a real benefit on this unit now something new for the pro series this year is that there's a removable ash catcher on the bottom all you have to do is undo a latch and then you can pull the ash catcher directly from the bottom of the unit take it to the garbage empty it out put it back in latch it up and you're good to go that makes it a lot easier than having to go in and vacuum out the inside of the unit every time you finish a cook now we also want to cover some opportunities for improvement now really there's two versions of this grill and that's what primarily people have been talking about online if you were one of the ones who got one of the first shipments of this grill to go out that grill had some challenges it didn't have 10 degree incremental control up to 300 degrees it had 25 degree and 50 degree incremental control which really harkens back to the old pit boss days where there weren't a lot of options in temperature control pitboss will send you a shipping label for your controller so you pop it out of the grill put it in a box ship it to them and in about one week turn around they'll ship you a flash controller with the new software and the firmware update on there so the whole thing is there's really two versions of this grille but no matter which one that you get especially if you've got one that's been shipped in the first shipment know that pit boss is going to take care of you and help you get your controller where it's up to snuff the other thing that i'd like to bring up is that the sear plate arm that you use to pull the steer plate open it occasionally wants to come apart for me there's just a nice little lock that goes over the sear plate arm occasionally that lock has come up and i've pulled it out i have to pull the grates off put it back in it's a small gripe but it's something that's happened a couple of times to us now something that they could do to this grill to make it better would be to even add lights on the inside it'd be nice to be able to get inside the grill open the lid and have lights come on when you're smoking especially in the dark after work it would just be lovely to have that that's a nice thing that we could see as an addition in the future so what did we think overall about the pit boss pro 1150 pellet grill the 1150 has a ton of room to smoke your favorite barbecue dishes it's lovely knowing that you're going to have enough space to cook for the largest parties that you'll throw in your backyard on a single cooker with the direct flame access for searing it's the combo grill that you want when you put a pellet smoker in your backyard now if you're interested in this grill and you want to check the current price just click the link in the description below if you click on that link and you make any kind of a purchase that just supports our channel and allows us to keep these videos coming to you so you can know the best in barbecue and the best in outdoor cooking and living so you don't waste your money on something that's not going to work for you now before you click away if you're on instagram facebook or twitter i want to encourage you to follow us because we're always putting out the sales that we know about in the barbecue world as well as behind the scenes of what's happening here and we're getting ready to actually unveil our new outdoor kitchen and i'd love for you to be able to see that when we have it coming up in another month or so and while you're here on youtube i want to encourage you if you like this video give us that thumbs up that sure helps us as we try to help other people know about the best in barbecue and outdoor cooking now also consider subscribing we have a lot of videos planned for the spring and the summer and we're going to do everything we can to show you as much new gear in the barbecue community so you know what to buy and forget the rest we also have some recipes that we're going to be sharing with you over the spring and summer and we have some dynamite ones coming up that you're going to want to see so i want to encourage you give us a subscribe hit that notification bell so you don't have to come find us youtube will let you know we have a new video coming out i'm david from the barbecue lab i want to say thanks so much for watching this video we're doing our best to bring you the absolute best in outdoor cooking and outdoor living and i look forward to seeing you next time you

Channel: The Barbecue Lab

Views: 326,000

Keywords: pit boss, pit boss smoker, pit boss pro series, pit boss pro series 1150, pit boss pro series 1150 wood pellet grill, pit boss pro series 1150 review, pit boss pro series review, pit boss pellet smoker, pit boss pellet grill, pit boss pellet grill review, pit boss pellet smoker review, pit boss pro 1150 review, pellet smoker, pellet grill, pellet smokers

Id: xiyeuSNgA28

Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 05 2021