Wood-Fired Meals Made Easy: Breeo X Series 24 Smokeless Fire Pit Does It All

A fire pit for the backyard pyro who loves live-fire cooking and quality workmanship

I admit, I’m a pyromaniac. I own a flamethrower, two firepits, two Argentinian parrillas, a kamado, an offset stickburning smoker, a pellet smoker, two outdoor wood-burning pizza ovens, two gas grills, two charcoal grills, and assorted other outdoor cooking gear.

Even firing up a Bic lighter gives me a little thrill. And I love cooking outside.

So I was super stoked to test the Breeo X Series 24 Smokeless Fire Pit. Founded in 2014 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Breeo pioneered the “smokeless” fire pit. Their pits are still manufactured in the USA (in Lancaster, in fact), while other similar fire pits such as Solo Stove are made in China. Breeo puts the emphasis on heavy-duty construction and cookability. The X Series is their bestselling line of fire pits, available in various sizes with a huge array of live-fire cooking accessories I couldn’t wait to try out.

Construction

Made with rust-resistant and corrosion-resistant 304 stainless steel, Breeo fire pits are built for a lifetime of use. They’re available in two finishes: shiny stainless steel (what I tested) or a mix of stainless and corten steel (shown in the photo above). Also called “weathering steel,” corten steel oxidizes over time, developing a bronze patina that protects the steel from rusting. Click here to read more about stainless steel.

The Breeo X Series 24 Smokeless Fire Pit is their most popular mid-size model with a 24-inch diameter inside (27-inch outside). It fits 4+ chairs around it. The steel pit sits on four 3-inch wide legs that raise the pit 2 3/4 inches off the ground for a total height of 15 inches and weight of about 62 pounds. At that size and weight, you could conceivably take this fire pit with you for camp cooking or tailgating. Breeo also makes a lighter Y Series line of fire pits designed for portability.

The X and Y in the name refer to the X- or Y-shaped air channels on the bottom of the pit, designed to improve airflow for fast lighting and long-lasting fires.

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What makes it “smokeless”?

Personally, I love smoke. It’s the foundation of great barbecue, after all! But, admittedly, it’s annoying getting a face full of smoke from a wood fire. And excessive smoke deters some folks from gathering around the fire, an activity I love for the backyard. The key to a successful fire pit session is building a fire that burns efficiently to minimize smoke.

Breeo fire pits make it a whole lot easier. Their patented X and Y designs consist of raised air vents on the bottom of the pit. Wood sits on top of the X- or Y- shaped vents, speeding the feed of oxygen to the fire. Breeo fire pits also feature double-wall construction, which draws air up from beneath the pit into a gap between the walls. As the fire burns in the pit, the hot air rises between the walls. That pressurized heated oxygen exits a ring of holes around the top of the fire pit, mixes with smoke there, and causes secondary combustion. This “reburn” is what burns off the volatile organic compounds and microscopic particles that make up smoke, creating a “smokeless” fire pit. Click here to learn more about wood, smoke, and combustion.

Is it perfectly smokeless? Not quite. You’ll still get some smoke when starting your fire, as always. But after the fire gets going, Breeo’s air vents, double-wall construction, and secondary combustion result in a remarkably efficient-burning fire that is dramatically less smoky than what you might be used to. With a well-built fire of seasoned wood entirely situated beneath the top rim of the pit, I couldn’t see any visible smoke rising.

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Fire starting

Breeo recommends building your wood fire with the “log cabin” method, as opposed to the teepee method. Essentially, the log cabin consists of two small-ish logs set down about a foot apart parallel to one another, and then two logs set down perpendicular to the ones beneath to make a square. Add an oil-soaked firestarter to the center, some kindling over the top and sides, and light ‘er up. The four logs provide a stable structure that keeps the fire burning efficiently as the wood gradually turns to embers and ash. Once the fire’s roaring, you can easily add thicker logs in the same log cabin pattern. Click here for details on the best fire-building methods.

As the fire burns, Breeo recommends moving the hot coals toward the fire pit’s outer walls. That provides more heat in the double-walled air chamber, amplifying the secondary combustion, and reducing smoke further.

Accessories

The Breeo X Series 24 Smokeless Fire Pit isn’t just for sitting around. It’s designed for live-fire cooking. The rim of the pit is 3 inches wide with a post insert hole to accommodate various cooking accessories. With Breeo’s simple Outpost rod, you can attach an adjustable stainless steel Grill Grate, stainless steel Sear Disc, Kettle Hook, a clever Rotisserie with four different attachments, and a steel Grill Dome lid with a 3/4-inch-thick, 12-inch diameter cordierite pizza stone that sits on top of the grill grate for making pizza or just for putting a lid over your grilled food. Without the Outpost, you can get a square Flat Top Griddle that sits over half the fire pit and a round SearPlate Griddle that sits over the entire pit. Other accessories include a base for the pit to raise it up a few inches to protect the surface beneath, a solid steel lid cover, a lighter fabric cover, an ash shovel, fire poker, and various other cooking tools. All Breeo cooking accessories are made of heavy-duty 304 stainless steel with no paint or coating.

Outpost Grill

Given the choice, I opt for live-fire cooking whenever possible. Yes, it requires more fire management and heat control, but the intensity of the wood fire, the dry heat, and the wood smoke aroma all captivate me so much more than a propane burner.

I tested several of Breeo’s cooking accessories, including the Outpost Grill, the Rotisserie and its four attachments, the Flat Top Griddle, and the SearPlate Griddle.

The Outpost Grill is a foundational accessory consisting of a 23-inch tall steel post that fits into the hole on the rim of the fire pit. It comes with a 20-inch diameter, heavy-duty adjustable-height grill grate that can be swung 360° around, so you can move food as close to or as far from the fire as needed. The post has a simple locking mechanism to keep it from spinning while installed on the pit. It also comes with an 11-inch long anchor so you can drive the post into the ground and use the Outpost Grill and its related accessories, including the rotisserie, at a remote campsite. For travel, the Outpost Grill also comes with a sturdy fabric carrying bag.

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On a summer bike trip, I had a friend drive the Outpost Grill to our remote campsite. After a gorgeous 80-mile ride, I cooked a meal for about 8 people at camp. The Outpost anchor was easy to knock into the ground with a piece of firewood, and the stabilizing feet helped to straighten the post and level out the grill grate. After setting it up over the fire, the grate’s T-handle stayed cool when swiveling the grate over or away from the fire. The thumb screw for raising and lowering the grate also stayed cool.

I grilled flank steaks over the fire along with grilled corn and baked potatoes (I baked the spuds ahead of time and reheated them at camp). For the steaks, I used the reverse-sear method, dusted them with Meathead’s Red Meat Rub and served them with blue cheese butter, caramelized onions, and sauteed garlic mushrooms and cherry tomatoes (all made ahead). The baked potato bar included butter, sour cream, bacon, and chives. And for dessert, grilled donuts. The Outpost grill handled everything with ease.

Back home, I tested the grill grate a few more times on the Breeo X Series 24 Smokeless Fire Pit, grilling burgers and steaks and such. Then I swung the grate out of the way and enjoyed fireside dinners outdoors with my family and friends. With a few chairs and small tables, Breeo fire pits excel at such a dual purpose: cooking + hanging out.

Rotisserie

The company’s newest cooking accessory is a clever Rotisserie unit powered by a rechargeable lithium ion battery pack or your electrical outlet via an AC adapter cord, both included. You can also run the Rotisserie on a 12-volt solar power unit, sold separately. The Rotisserie consists of a solid cast aluminum body and a high-temperature silicone outer sleeve. It slips into a steel bracket that slides onto the Outpost, allowing you to adjust the rotisserie height and swing it 360° around as needed while cooking.

The Rotisserie motor has a max turn weight of up to 20 pounds, so it could conceivably handle a holiday turkey. Unlike most rotisseries, the spin speed is adjustable from 3 to 12 rpm, a nice plus. The spit rod comes with your standard meat prongs, and I also tested the optional rotisserie flat basket, round tumble basket, and skewer setup, which is an assembly with six sword-style skewers that automatically rotates your kabobs over the fire.

To test the prongs, I started with something other than your customary rotisserie chicken. Instead, I roasted a whole pineapple. I trimmed it up, roasted it over a low-burning fire and glazed it with coconut milk and cinnamon sugar. I love this method of cooking pineapple because the spit rod delivers heat to the center of the fruit, cooking it through so you can slice the pineapple crosswise and eat the whole slices without having to discard the core. It was an ideal summertime dessert.

This year, my garden had a bumper crop of peppers, mostly red jalapenos, but also orange snacking peppers and red bell peppers. I roasted them all in the tumble basket to make hot sauce. It took about 30 minutes to get them lightly charred, then I put the peppers through a food mill to strain out the seeds and skins. Then I pureed the milled-pepper goop with pan-blackened onions and garlic, apple cider vinegar, distilled white vinegar, lime juice, salt, and a little agave syrup. Oh, and a touch of xanthan gum to emulsify everything. I’ve been dabbing this hot sauce on almost everything. And the tumble basket is a joy to use: just twist off the lid on the end, add whatever you want to fire-roast, re-fasten the lid, and set the basket to spinning over the fire. It’s perfect for smaller items like shrimp, asparagus, and other vegetables that might fall through a grill grate.

In the flat basket, I started off with a grilled fillet of red snapper. First, I heated the basket over the fire and brushed it with oil to preseason the steel in a bid to prevent sticking. I also oiled up the fish, and then seasoned it with salt, pepper, and some dried herbs. Butter and lemon was the only “sauce.” Nice and simple. The fish came out perfectly cooked, and I had zero issues with sticking. I also stopped the rotisserie at one point to crisp up the skin, which worked like a charm.

I gotta be honest: I’m not a big skewer guy. Why waste time skewering food that you can just put directly on the grill? However, if you don’t have a grill grate, skewers make total sense, and they expose the food more directly to the radiant heat of the fire, which improves flavor. Plus, skewers make a great presentation. So I was game to try out this gizmo. Breeo’s skewer accessory is a clever contraption of 6 flat, sword-style steel skewers that lock into a barrel-shaped assembly. You can fit a boatload of food on there (3 to 4 pounds of meat), and the rotisserie makes it effortless to get everything evenly cooked.

Pork tenderloins were ridiculously cheap at my meat market, so I bought two, cut them into medallions, seasoned them with Meathead’s Pork Rub, and impaled them on the swords. A little KC Barbecue Sauce at the end, and these big meat coins brought many smiles at the table.

My two favorite things about this rotisserie are the adjustable spin speed and the easy adjustments you can make up or down, toward or away from the fire. A lot of rotisseries are fixed in place, but Breeo’s moves with ease on the Outpost, so you can easily adjust things as needed, without messing with the fire itself. Everything I cooked on the Rotisserie had a light smoke flavor with excellent Maillard browning from the dry heat of the live wood fire.

At first, I thought the Rotisserie body might overheat because it sits near the rim of the fire pit, but I had no issues in all my tests. The high-temp silicone outer sleeve is designed to protect the Rotisserie motor from damage.

Flat Top Griddle

If you’re a griddle fan, you have lots of options for the Breeo X Series 24 Smokeless Fire Pit. I tested two of them, and the Flat Top Griddle was my favorite. Like all of Breeo’s products, it’s heavy-duty—a full-on 26-pound slab of 1/4-inch carbon steel. Deeply browned smashburgers? No problem. Well-seared steak fajitas? You got it. The Flat Top Griddle is sized to fit halfway over the fire pit, measuring 24 1/4 inches wide x 16-inches deep for the X Series 24 Fire Pit I tested. That configuration allows you to manage the wood fire on the other half of the pit, so you can easily move the coals and adjust the heat as necessary. The griddle’s 1 3/4-inch side walls allow you to bank food at the edges, and it comes pre-seasoned so it’s ready to cook out of the box. The griddle also has a grease slot at the center back wall, making it easy to scrape away excess gunk while cooking. And it has silicone carry handles, a nice plus for a heavy metal slab like this.

I cooked a few things on the Flat Top Griddle, the most memorable of which was breakfast on a cool fall morning. I was out of bacon, so I just made short-order eggs and toast, both fried in butter on the griddle. It was damn good and didn’t take too long. I built the fire at 8:45am and was done breakfast by 9:30. Breeo fires catch and burn quickly due to the pit’s airflow-optimized design. That’s a big plus in my book because most wood-fire cooking involves waiting around for at least an hour until the wood burns down to manageable embers that you can actually cook on. But with this efficient-burning system, I was making simple wood-fired outdoor meals in 45 minutes start to finish.

SearPlate griddle

My next favorite Breeo griddle accessory is the SearPlate. It’s another giant slab of carbon steel (33 pounds), but this one fits around the entire top rim of the fire pit. It’s like a hibachi setup, perfect for 4+ people to gather around the fire and cook over it simultaneously. On the X Series 24, the SearPlate Griddle gives you a 7-inch-wide carbon steel cooking surface all around the pit. A 10 1/2-inch hole in the center makes it easy to move coals and adjust the heat as necessary. The SearPlate also has convenient stay-cool carrying handles.

I decided to do breakfast again, but this time French toast. On another cool and sunny fall morning, I fired up the Breeo with some newspaper, kindling, and logs in a log cabin pattern. No oil-soaked firestarter. With a few extra crumpled up wads of newspaper, the logs were lit in just a few minutes. Again, the superior airflow on the Breeo made starting a wood fire easy. When it was hot, I lowered the SearPlate onto the pit and went inside to mix up the custard and get the bread soaking.

About 20 minutes later, I went outside to check the griddle’s surface temp, and it was colored blue in the hottest spots where the coals were concentrated, a cool effect of the way light waves reflect off the ultra-thin iron oxide layer on the hot surface of carbon steel.

I let the fire burn down a bit more then temp’d it. Near the center hole, the griddle temp was in the 500 to 600°F range. Near the edge where I was planning to cook, with slightly fewer coals underneath, the griddle was around 350°F, perfect for cooking French toast. And that’s with a pretty healthy fire raging in the center of the pit. The nice thing about this SearPlate Griddle design is that you naturally build a fire in the center of the pit, so the heat remains concentrated there, and most of it escapes through the center hole. The perimeter of the griddle sees less heat. It’s like a natural two-zone cooking setup, where you can move food toward the center of the griddle to sear or toward the edges for more gentle heat.

I add a little cream to my custard along with vanilla and cinnamon for French toast. Click here for a good standard French Toast recipe. It came out awesome—perfectly browned and cooked through. I also cooked some bacon on the SearPlate. Since it doesn’t have side walls and my patio is slightly angled to direct rainwater down the driveway, some bacon grease dripped onto the rim of the fire pit. Not a big deal, but keep in mind that grease management on the SearPlate means scraping it into the center hole as needed.

To clean the griddle, I just scrubbed it with some water and a stiff polyester grill grate scrubber. Worked great.

Conclusion

Here are my favorite things about the Breeo X Series 24 Smokeless Fire Pit:

• Quality materials: Breeo makes their fire pits and other products from heavy-duty, rock solid American steel built to last a lifetime.
• Smokeless design: The raised, X-shaped air vents in the bottom of the X series fire pit maximize airflow for an efficient-burning fire that’s quick to light and easy to maintain. The double-walled construction and air holes at the top of the pit also create secondary combustion that greatly minimizes smoke. When used properly, the smokeless design works as advertised.
• Quality workmanship: I like Breeo’s attention to details. The X Series 24 Smokeless Fire Pit isn’t fussy, but has well-thought-out touches. For instance, the fabric cover comes with a simple metal teepee frame that elevates the center to prevent pooling water. The cover also has a drawstring that tightens around the rim for a tight fit. Sometimes the little things make all the difference.
• Built for outdoor cooking: Breeo’s fire pits are beautiful to just sit around, but they’re made for cooking around as well. Multiple accessories allow you to cook almost any meal you can imagine outside and then enjoy the meal around the fire with your family, friends, or guests.

And a couple minor notes for improvement:

• Ash removal: There is no ash-removal system. A slide-out ash removal tray would make things easier. But it’s simple enough to use a cheap ash shovel. Breeo sells one for this purpose.
• Outpost anchor: When using the Outpost at camp, the anchor holds the post in ground pretty well, but an X-shaped design, rather than a simple T-shape would provide more stability for leveling the post and grill grate. The post swings 360° around as needed and stays in place relatively well, but a series of stopping points might hold the grate even more securely.
• Hot, hot, hot: A 62-pound steel firepit that burns efficiently gets wicked hot. Avoid touching the firepit when you have a fire raging. Even brushing your leg against it could lead to a burn. For safety, Breeo adds high-temperature silicone to many of its cooking accessories, but I recommend wearing long grill gloves too, especially when installing and removing the Rotisserie attachments.

All in all, the Breeo X Series 24 Smokeless Fire Pit makes for a fantastic live-fire cooking experience. A solid Platinum medal.

We thank Breeo for providing an X Series 24 Smokeless Fire Pit for our tests.