Buy On Amazon: Pit Boss Pro Series 1150
The Pit Boss Pro Series 1150 is a large format pellet smoker that you can find at a big box store here in the United States. Let’s start with a little bit of product information. The grill 1150 tells us its name that it has 1150 square inches of cooking space available on the surface.
General Overview for Pit Boss Pro Series 1150
It comes in two different racks; the primary cooking surface has 697 square inches. And then there’s a second-tier above that has around 400 square inches. Now 1150 has a temperature range of 180 on the low end up to 500 degrees on the high end.
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, grab your tape measure, and see if that’ll work. But I think that you’ll be happy with the size of this unit.
It weighs about 188 pounds, which means it is no light grill. Suppose you’re used to having a Weber kettle or something on the smaller side. This is a big grill with some pretty heavy metal on it, so you’re not going to be looking at a lightweight grill with this, but it is heavy-duty, just like Pit Boss says on a lot of marketing.
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 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 unique for this Pit Boss Pro Series 1150, there are not many grill manufacturers that 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 a substantial amount of shots compared to many of the other grills on the market, so you can put a 20-pound bag and a half in this grill and know that you can cook overnight without any problem.
Pit Boss Pro Series 1150 Assembly
Let’s cover the assembly of this grill now. It took us about an hour to assemble, and the two of us were working on the assembly together. When you try to take the legs and attach them to the body, it is an odd angle in that the legs themselves are sculpted and the bottom of the body. When you’re trying to put those two pieces together and get the angle of those screws just right, it’s difficult, so I recommend a second person help you assemble this grill. Still, the main body comes already assembled for you, and most of the accessories in 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 for the most part, but just a second person to put those legs on.
Initial Burn for Pit Boss Pro Series 1150
The manufacturer always recommends that you do an initial burn-off of the unit before you actually cook any food on it. 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, you’re free to cook away.
Smoking and Grilling on Pit Boss Pro Series 1150
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 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, this grill put flame marks on that meat. You could see where the flames got through in the say 2 to 3 minutes per side that we cook that meat. And it did a great job.
And there were quite a few other things that we grilled on this unit, but I want to talk about what this excels at, and being a smoker and also does a great job grilling. But this is a pellet smoker. First, and a grill second, yes, you can grill on it, but if I’m going to be choosing to grill versus smoke, I’m going to 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.
When we had the chicken thighs in the pan in the butter bath, we did a fantastic job with that. From pulling them out, saucing them, and putting them back on the grill to set the sauce, we’re 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 yellow rice 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 smoky goodness when you cook it on the grill. 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 I got to tell you this. Pit Boss Pro Series 1150 did a fantastic job of getting that fat to render and having a nice bark on the outside. I was pleased with how this handled the smoking of that brisket.
Storage for Pit Boss Pro Series 1150
Now, when it comes to storage of the pit boss, we’ve had us outside for two months. So this unit has been outside without a cover for two months, and the cover doesn’t come with this unit. Still, 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 those two months.
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 Pro Series 1150 comes with a 5-year warranty, so you don’t have to worry about any problems on this grill for at least five years now; with each review we do, we like to cover what we also love some opportunities for improvements.
What We Love on Pit Boss Pro Series 1150
One of the things that we love about this unit is the 32-pound pellet hopper. There’s a nice clear window in the front to see how many pellets are remaining in your hopper and 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 also really like the sear capability of this grill to pull the 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 it’s into the end. I want to sear. I love that I can crank, grill up, pull that arm, and put the meat right over the sear plate to get a nice sear with real flames getting to the meat.
Another thing I want to point out is that the handle 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 and patio. This grill has a substantial handle for moving this thing around, and I don’t worry that I will 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 like is the smoke it app now. This app allows you to control the grill temperature when you’re not around it. It gives you the ability to monitor the temperatures on the probes you have in the unit, and it will also help you connect online to get recipes from the Pit Boss website.
This grill comes with two probes, 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 various pieces of meat simultaneously.
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. Suppose you haven’t had a grill with a probe port. You will love it if you decide to pick up this unit because it lets you 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 you have to access your meat.
Another thing that we love is the overall space for cooking. When you look at the size of the chamber, we’re talking about almost 700 inches of cooking space on the main level.
That doesn’t even include over 404 hundred, some square inches on the second level. There’s just a lot of room for cooking meat. Suppose you’re going to cook pork butts, no problem. You could put 8, maybe even 10 on this unit without a problem. So 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 to the current retail price for this unit Is $599. There aren’t many smokers with this amount of space or this heavy metal in that price range. So I mean, this is a real value in the space.
Another thing that I’m pleased with is the 10-degree incremental control up to 300 degrees. When you start at the 180 up to 300, you can control that in 10-degree increments, and I like that because there are quite a few other grills 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 cooking. If I have a tray of meat, I can come out and 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 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 to this unit.
This year, a removable ash catcher on the bottom is something new for the Pro series. 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, 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.
Potential Improvements for Pit Boss Pro Series 1150
The sear plate opens it occasionally and wants to come apart. There’s just a nice little lock that goes over the sear plate arm. Sometimes, that lock has come up, and I pulled it out and had to pull the grates off and 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 add lights on the inside. It would be nice 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.
Our Verdict
The Pit Boss Pro Series 1150 has a ton of room to smoke your favorite barbecue dishes. It’s lovely knowing you’ll have enough space to cook for the largest parties you’ll throw in your backyard on a single cooker.
With the direct flame access for searing, it’s the combo grill you want when you put a pellet smoker in your backyard. If you’re interested in this grill and want to check the current price, click the link above.
Thank you for reading this review, and we will make sure to update you on how it performs over time.