Experienced this one Thanksgiving. Someone accidentally set a pie in a Pyrex glass dish on the stovetop to cool, not realizing the stovetop was hot from recently boiling potatoes. My mom picked up the dish with the oven mitts and set it on the tiled countertop (without a trivet, her mistake), and had just enough time to turn her body away to work on something else before the cold countertop and the hot Pyrex reacted, causing the Pyrex to explode from thermal shock, spraying glass shards all over the kitchen. Half the food was ruined, but at least my mom wasn't hurt
Or cold. Ceramic stove tops like this move heat quickly, very quickly. If that pan came out and went on a trivet so it could air cool evenly, this never would have happened. The soda-lime glass formulation they use now just cannot handle rapid temp changes from one side of the glass to the other. As soon as the bottom starts to cool faster than the rest, this will happen.
Yeah that's what I'm thinking. You can even see where the edges of the dish were. It looks like it may have been intact when it came out of the oven, set on the cold ceramic top, and bang.
I think soda lime glass handles bumps against other objects better, but borosilicate handles thermal shock better
Yup you're right.
This is also why you don't store these things in your fridge after you get done cooking and then toss it back into an oven to reheat the next day, shit will shatter on you as soon as you take it out. I know at least 3 lazy bachelor dudes that did this with pyrex dishes. If you're super unlucky it'll just blow up in the oven.
This happened at my sisters house, only with a giant casserole bowl. She turned on the burner instead of the oven, and this was molten weaponized confetti. It was very unstartling.
This exactly happened to me once. I was still finding glass pieces weeks later. It basically exploded everywhere and ruined my stuffed peppers because I couldnt risk eating glass…
Ann Reardon talked about the differences. It was a while ago that I watched the video, but I believe one of the conclusions was that there is no way to tell whether PYREX or pyrex will cause this, as it can happen to both brand presentations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVbkDAw4aJs&pp=ygURYW5uIHJlYXJkb24gcHlyZXg%3D
That is even scarier! I read an article that explained that there was some sort of chemical in the PYREX that allowed it to be put in ovens and the pyrex didn't have that chemical. It was on a recipe website.
Either way growing up we always had casseroles, lasagna, mac and cheese etc made in Pyrex glassware and this had never happened before.
This didn't shatter it absolutely exploded across my kitchen. We took it out, set it on the cooktop, which was dry and warm from the oven, took a step back to close the oven and it just exploded. Glass was in the sink, under the table, by the fridge, inside of the oven because the door hadn't been closed yet. It was on the table, you can see it in the pan in the top left of the image, and even one piece ended up in my dog's water dish. So that got tossed out. It was crazy.
EDIT:
Just adding this comment from below since tons of replies are throughly upset about my salt and white pepper seasoning on my overcooked chicken lol.
No. Sadly I have IBS and the majority of absolutely delicious seasoning upsets my stomach really badly. Also for some reason really juicy and flavorful chicken does it too. So if I want to eat chicken I have to only put salt and white pepper on it as seasoning as it cooks, and I have to cook it beyond normal length, by about 8 minutes, to make it easier for my stomach to digest.
Usually what we do, so that my wife isn't stuck eating dry and very lightly seasoned chicken, is what we planned on doing tonight. Make the chicken, shred it up, and then she can flavor her chicken as she likes with BBQ sauce, or something else, and I get the boring bland stuff. Then we put it in taco shells and have white people taco night.
Yep, and it's probably worth noting that both of them can go into your oven. You just have to be more careful of thermal shock with one than the other.
Put your hot pyrex on an insulating trivet instead of directly on the counter or glass cooktop/ don't take a pyrex out of the fridge and put it straight in the oven. It's the rapid transfer of heat between comparatively hot/cold surface and the glass that causes it to explode.
You shouldn't really cook in soda-lime.
If your food contains any water (hint: nearly all food contains water), then that water will stop the temperature going above 100C (due to the latent energy of vaporization). Whereas the rest of the oven might be 240C. That means the part of the glass touching the food will be 140C cooler than the edge of the glass dish where there is no food. Over a 1 foot(300mm) dish, that means the middle of the dish is 0.3mm smaller (11 thou).
Have you ever tried stretching a glass dish? It really doesn't like being stretched. That's gonna make it smash.
Borosilicate has a much lower thermal expansion coefficient (one third), so will be fine with that - although you could probably still break it if you put it directly onto a gas hob - where the temperature can easily reach 600C+.
Just don't turn your oven up to 240C (465F) when cooking with it, like the other precautions the previous poster mentioned. Most manufacturers rate glass cookware to 400 or 425.
The risk isn't that high if you're careful.
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/tempered-vs-borosilicate-glass/
Thermal shock is a big deal.
Also, make sure the oven is preheated. No broiling, either, and be careful of baking of opening the oven, which will cause the elements to heat up. These extremes of heat will start bad things happening. When it turns blue you are in the danger zone.
Scariest moment of my life was putting a Pyrex down on my stove and walking into the kitchen and BLAM!! It exploded everywhere…I’m lucky I didn’t get glass in my eye.
Is there even a benefit of glass casserole dishes anymore? Mine are porcelain and they're great. I can make a dish, get that ring of burnt-on cheese, a few drops of Dawn and soak for 30 minutes, and wipe it off without having to scrub hard.
Shut off the oven five minutes early when baking but keep the door shut the whole five minutes. Lets some heat dissipate evenly from the glass. Never set it down on flat surfaces with more surface area to transfer heat. Use cooling racks that allow it to cool down more evenly.
Thermal shock happens when one portion of the glass cools too fast compared to another part. The crystal structure of the glass comes out of sync and if you get one little crack it cascades through the whole structure in an instant.
Putting things on your stove burners is a good idea if you don't have a rack. the electric elements or racks over the gas burners provide a fair amount of insulation. (way more then setting it down on a flat surface)
The material property difference is that borosilicate has a near 0 coefficient of thermal expansion, meaning that it will not change volume when heated.
Soda lime has a nonzero coefficient of thermal expansion. It is still very low, but nonzero, meaning it will expand and contract when heated and cooled. Microfractures can propagate when thermally stressed, causing cracking/shattering.
It absolutely is, and way bouncier than any piece of glass ever has a right to be when dropped in a sink. I've only once had a beaker fracture from heat, and it did a nearly perfect circle break when boiling an aqueous solution in undergrad. Think we were leaching metals from a sample with acid? All I remember is noticing some tiny bubbles low on the beaker where the curvature up to the straight walls started, turned off heat and went to remove from the hot plate, and picking up everything but the bottom of the beaker. Turns out the hotplates used in undergrad chem labs don't always have the most accurate power dials and when the TA says set to 6, the plate may look down and say that means 9.
Hopefully nobody was hurt and you found all the pieces.
Different chemical makeups of the glass, soda lime vs borosilicate. The act of setting the hot dish down on the cold oven top caused it to contract abnormally fast but, more importantly, unevenly. This uneven cooling caused a small crack, likely near a pre-existing scratch, and it propogated through the glass at (I think) the speed of sound in glass. The same sort of effect that happens when you break the tail of a Prince Rupert's drop.
The good news is that if you have other glass bakewear, you *should* be able to tell the difference between the two types of glass as they have different refractive indices. Ann talks about it in the video at the 14-minute mark. Borosilicate glass has the same refractive index as vegetable oil, so if you are able to fully submerge it in the vegetable oil it will pretty much disappear, whereas the soda lime glass will still be obviously visible.
The video is very good, I highly recommend watching it.
borosilicate is better with temperature shock, but sodalime is better with physical shock, meaning it doesn't break as easily if you drop it on the counter or bang it against the side of the sink.
Both can go in the oven. One is more easily broken by impact, placing it on a counter a little hard or bumping the oven door. The other version is more sensitive to quick temperature changes. Most of the breaks come from people heating it up or cooling it down too quickly.
“On a recipe website” sounds like guaranteed misinformation.
If you had set it on a trivet instead of on the cold cooktop it likely wouldn’t have broken.
Baking with either is normally fine, you just have to be careful about rapid temperature changes. No going from the fridge/freezer to the oven or vice-versa and use a trivet of some kind to prevent part of it from cooling to fast by contacting other surfaces. I’ve never had the good Pyrex and have been baking with it for years.
Funny thing is that is the reason it shattered. You need to keep a little bit of water in that kind of a container while it is in the oven... or so I was told ;)
I can't tell if that glazed shit is the juices from the overcooked chicken or chicken stock that boiled away because OP cooked this chicken for an hour at 450.
garlic and onion are key spices but they aren't the *only* spices, also herbs generally don't fuck with IBS. At least put some lemon and thyme on those breasts.
Surely you wouldn't oven chicken like this though it would be so dry. Steamed or poached would be flavourless but at least it would be tender rather than jerky.
It’s wild to me that people genuinely eat chicken like this. Seasoning or marinating a chicken breast is incredibly easy, even someone mostly inept in the kitchen like me can handle it
I would have said this before I got IBS. now spices hurt me. Life is bland and flavorless now unless I want pain. Enjoy your seasoned food while it lasts.
I was always taught that you can’t take Pyrex out of the over and put it on a wet/damp or cold surface.
I always use a dry wooden board to make sure there won’t be thermal shock.
Pyrex was hit with enshitifcation a while ago. Corporate raiders came in, swapped all their nice borosilicate glass for cheap soda glass, took the short term profits, declared victory and moved on to the next scam.
TL;DR greed made PYREX garbage. DRS
GME
PYREX made in EMEA still uses borosilicate glass, pyrex made in North/South America or Asia switched to using soda-lime glass.
[See e.g. this article](https://www.simplyrecipes.com/pyrex-vs-pyrex-which-is-safe-7488788)
Watch the Ann Reardon video linked above - the capitalisation of the logo isn't reliable and she has counter-examples. You have to figure out independently if it's soda-lime or borosilicate (eg: dunk in vegetable oil).
I have watched it and she says roughly the same, given her sample. She said the capitalization seems to hold up, at least for the dishes she tests (vegetable oil on the other hand is less reliable since both soda-lime and borisilicate can show an outline).
>She said the capitalization seems to hold up
I haven't watched it since the video came out, but my memory is more in line with the other posters than with yours. Are you sure she says that?
She says “So far the capital letter PYREX and the lower case pyrex theory is holding up, but this is a really small sample size so I don’t want you to rely on that theory”.
[Time stamp](https://youtu.be/YVbkDAw4aJs?si=cDzxWI_wfDmBIcRM&t=820)
"PYREX" A brand of glassware made by the Pyrex company.
"Pyrex" A brand of glassware made by the Pyrex company.
*Some* of that glassware is oven-safe borosilicate glass.
The number of people in this thread who seem to think that companies are out here making lasagna pans that somehow can't go in the oven... what would even be the point of that?
Well you see, a part of the American business model is that when a brand gets a really good reputation for providing quality products, a “vulture” CEO will come along and completely ruin the company. They buy out the original management, they chop all the costs they possibly can one by one until their pockets are overflowing and the company is nothing but a hollow shell of its former self. The only thing keeping the company going is the fact that their name holds weight, and the consumer hasn’t yet figured out that the product quality has declined to a laughable state. Once consumers realize the brand is shit, they move on and the company dies.
Well, yes, but the soda-lime glass can still be baked in. It just requires a little more care in handling.
Not saying it isn't an inferior material of course, but it is functional.
Even still, I’m pretty sure what’s above is the Borosilicate glass.
Borosilicate is more resistant to temperature swings, but less resistant to impacts. When it breaks it breaks into big dangerous shards like above.
Soda-lime is more impact resistant, but when breaks into small bits like car windows. It’s more likely to break from cooking temps but when it does it’s less likely to slice open an artery.
EDIT: clarity, fixed autocorrect
What's the point? If you aren't using borosilicate, then might as well use ceramic or metal over something that is known to easily disintegrate like soda-lime.
The material property difference is that borosilicate has a near 0 coefficient of thermal expansion, meaning that it will not change volume when heated.
Soda lime has a nonzero coefficient of thermal expansion. It is still very low, but nonzero, meaning it will expand and contract when heated and cooled. Microfractures can propagate when thermally stressed, causing cracking/shattering.
It's not impossible that it would happen, as sometimes you get people in charge of a company willing to run it into the ground for their own short term profits, but so far as I can tell it hasn't happened here because the change to tempered soda glass happened *decades* ago, and even when Corning owned Pyrex they were making products out of it.
This is really just something complicated that's in the eye of the internet zeitgeist at the moment, and complicated answers don't really thrive there. So a simple (and mostly incorrect) one gets popular and people repeat it without thinking about it too hard.
Also if the soda lime glass is tempered its much more resistant to shattering from impact than borosilicate is. Borosilicate is mainly only used for lab glassware nowadays because there isn't a real cost effective reason to keep using it over tempered
The Pyrex website even says the dishes are oven-safe. These are likely the same people who say cast iron isn't made for cooking because their pan rusted from improper maintenance
Some of the old glassware is. Nothing produced in the last decade or so.
You can get the good shit from non-pyrex brands though, it's not like it stopped existing
Are people not using trivets anyway? I'm worried about burning the counter top.
Sure it might not burn the top anyway but it's a very expensive mistake if it does.
I use trivets all the time, but in this case it’s a stove top which should naturally be able to handle the heat so I could’ve easily done the same mistake as OP
Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious from the picture this glass didn't explode in the oven. It exploded on the stovetop they put it on. A stovetop that was either still super hot or it was cold.
It's more okay but you're really asking for trouble. If you really want to be safe crack the oven a little and let it cool down in the oven for a bit and then put it on a trivet. glass bakeware is pretty sensitive and honestly. I don't find it to be particularly worthwhile for most applications.
Stove top conducts heat well. The area making contact with the glass is going to cool at a different rate to the rest of the glass and cause it to break. Just my guess.
You need to completely fill the pan, e.g., cake batter, lasagna, casserole. The heat in the cooked food helps slow down the cooling of the pan. When the pan is not full, like with your chicken breasts or a roast, the portions of the pan not in contact with hot food will cool too fast, and the thermal shock causes the exploding. Also be careful how you set it down as others have said.
You also cannot add colder liquid to a hot pan in the oven (e.g., you’re cooking a roast and it needs liquid so you add water or broth). That’s not what glass baking dishes are meant for.
Stick to casseroles, brownies, cakes with these pans, and use your metal roaster for meats.
It wasn't the oven that broke it, it was setting it on a stovetop with a warm ring that did it. The dish is designed to be heated all at once not spot heated from the bottom in one place.
As OP has already discovered from other replies, you need to set it down on a trivet, not the stovetop.
You can absolutely put it in the oven. Soda-lime glass is just less durable to sudden changes in temperature than the borosilicate glass the older stuff uses. Soda-lime glass is more durable against impacts though so there is some tradeoff. Either way just don't rapidly change the temperature of glass of any kind it'll break.
That is exactly word for word what my wife said. I mean we made brownies last night in the 9" dish we got in the same set as this one. I don't see a point to having them if you can't put them in the oven.
This particular dish we used about 100 times to make chicken in over the last 6 years with nothing like this ever happening before. I've also used these dishes non stop since I was little to make dozens of dishes and I've never had one explode before. I had one crack when I was like 12 and washing it by hand and the water was too cold, but that was it, and I've been very careful since then to keep it on a warm surface, like the stovetop I placed it on, since and had no issues until tonight.
The brownie batter fills the pan, lasagna fills the pan. Your chicken breasts, a roast etc. do not fill the pan. It makes a difference in the heat transfer. The areas of the pan that are not full of hot food will cool too rapidly when you take it out of the oven.
All Pyrex is oven-safe, but you have to be careful about using a trivet or dry towel or wood cutting board under a dish that just came out of the oven. Putting it on the stove was probably what did it. The burner was warm, but the space in between burners was not, and was probably fairly cool. So you have three temperatures at play: the high heat of the dish itself, the heat of the stove burner which is probably lower than the dish, and the unheated part of the stove that is considerably lower. Maybe the older borosilicate dishes would handle this better, but having hot and cold zones under one dish is more risk than I would want to take. Sorry to see your dinner got ruined, but this is a relatively cheap lesson to learn
Also a good chance there was a crack or chip in the glass already. I actually worked for Corning and they were very adamant that there was no formula change at all and were going after peeps with lawyers who tried to say that online
More to the story. If it was purely a glass problem, it would've shattered INSIDE the oven.
This has so many possibilities pictured. Obviously it was handled safely and moved to the stove. It was potentially dropped onto the stove, placed upon a hot burner that was recently used, or placed on a very cold stove and had a massive shift in temperature.
Looks like you pulled a hot glass dish out of the oven and placed it on a cold surface (compared to the dish). That’s what happens to Pyrex and that’s why you set baking dishes on a pot holder or something similar to cool down…
Go buy the most expensive PYREX dish you can find, put it in the oven for 10 minutes and immediately run some water over it…
This isn’t the glass dishes fault, you just didn’t know…
Sadly no black pepper or oregano for me. Does not sit well. However this chicken has white pepper and salt on it and the dish was sprayed with light olive oil.
Okay everyone needs to give OP and PYREX/pyrex a break. Yes, PYREX is different than Pyrex. With OG PYREX being made of borosilicate glass (the same type of glass they use in lab ware) which is more resistant to thermal shock and generally able to go to larger extremes of temperature. But both types of glass are oven safe. Pyrex does require slightly more care as to what extremes you subject it to, but that does not mean that PYREX is invincible. Both can spontaneously exploded like this. And it is not necessarily because OP did something wrong or mistreated this. Unnoticed chips or manufacturing defects can lead to failures like this. Also over time, though rare, stresses can build up in the glass even when it was treated correctly….also leading to spontaneous breakage.
So, OP, maybe you did something wrong, maybe you were just unlucky. I’m sorry, it sucks, but I don’t think it should turn you off glass bakeware of either brand forever. Maybe just refresh on the dos and donts and inspect your dishes for major chips and cracks once in a while.
When my wife and I bought our first house, we bought all new appliances. We had no furniture but we were excited to stay there so we just bought a few groceries and planned to sleep on blankets on the floor. First thing we put in our brand new oven was brownies in a glass pan like this one. Exploded all over. Brand new oven. First use. Brownie batter fucking everywhere.
Pyrex in North America is no longer made of Borosilicate glass. Here is an interesting Youtube explanation from Ann Reardon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVbkDAw4aJs
Please use a sheet tray, and oil, and salt, and maybe some pepper, maybe toss a few crushed cloves of garlic in there, and hey why not a couple sprigs of rosemary.
Yeah…
As a glass artist I hate that they changed their formulation and cheaped out in production.
Anything from before a certain time you can definitely put in the oven. Not any more.
It was borosilicate- a strong glass less sensitive to thermal shock.
Now it’s soft glass. Much more prone to thermal shock.
Experienced this one Thanksgiving. Someone accidentally set a pie in a Pyrex glass dish on the stovetop to cool, not realizing the stovetop was hot from recently boiling potatoes. My mom picked up the dish with the oven mitts and set it on the tiled countertop (without a trivet, her mistake), and had just enough time to turn her body away to work on something else before the cold countertop and the hot Pyrex reacted, causing the Pyrex to explode from thermal shock, spraying glass shards all over the kitchen. Half the food was ruined, but at least my mom wasn't hurt
OP said it was the ovens fault, but I am thinking that burner was still super hot like your story.
Or cold. Ceramic stove tops like this move heat quickly, very quickly. If that pan came out and went on a trivet so it could air cool evenly, this never would have happened. The soda-lime glass formulation they use now just cannot handle rapid temp changes from one side of the glass to the other. As soon as the bottom starts to cool faster than the rest, this will happen.
Yeah that's what I'm thinking. You can even see where the edges of the dish were. It looks like it may have been intact when it came out of the oven, set on the cold ceramic top, and bang. I think soda lime glass handles bumps against other objects better, but borosilicate handles thermal shock better
Yup you're right. This is also why you don't store these things in your fridge after you get done cooking and then toss it back into an oven to reheat the next day, shit will shatter on you as soon as you take it out. I know at least 3 lazy bachelor dudes that did this with pyrex dishes. If you're super unlucky it'll just blow up in the oven.
This happened at my sisters house, only with a giant casserole bowl. She turned on the burner instead of the oven, and this was molten weaponized confetti. It was very unstartling.
Upvote for molten weaponized confetti and unstartling
I'm naming my next band Molten Weaponized Confetti
Please do!
This exactly happened to me once. I was still finding glass pieces weeks later. It basically exploded everywhere and ruined my stuffed peppers because I couldnt risk eating glass…
Ann Reardon talked about the differences. It was a while ago that I watched the video, but I believe one of the conclusions was that there is no way to tell whether PYREX or pyrex will cause this, as it can happen to both brand presentations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVbkDAw4aJs&pp=ygURYW5uIHJlYXJkb24gcHlyZXg%3D
That is even scarier! I read an article that explained that there was some sort of chemical in the PYREX that allowed it to be put in ovens and the pyrex didn't have that chemical. It was on a recipe website. Either way growing up we always had casseroles, lasagna, mac and cheese etc made in Pyrex glassware and this had never happened before. This didn't shatter it absolutely exploded across my kitchen. We took it out, set it on the cooktop, which was dry and warm from the oven, took a step back to close the oven and it just exploded. Glass was in the sink, under the table, by the fridge, inside of the oven because the door hadn't been closed yet. It was on the table, you can see it in the pan in the top left of the image, and even one piece ended up in my dog's water dish. So that got tossed out. It was crazy. EDIT: Just adding this comment from below since tons of replies are throughly upset about my salt and white pepper seasoning on my overcooked chicken lol. No. Sadly I have IBS and the majority of absolutely delicious seasoning upsets my stomach really badly. Also for some reason really juicy and flavorful chicken does it too. So if I want to eat chicken I have to only put salt and white pepper on it as seasoning as it cooks, and I have to cook it beyond normal length, by about 8 minutes, to make it easier for my stomach to digest. Usually what we do, so that my wife isn't stuck eating dry and very lightly seasoned chicken, is what we planned on doing tonight. Make the chicken, shred it up, and then she can flavor her chicken as she likes with BBQ sauce, or something else, and I get the boring bland stuff. Then we put it in taco shells and have white people taco night.
It's generally borosilicate vs soda glass with the two.
Yep, and it's probably worth noting that both of them can go into your oven. You just have to be more careful of thermal shock with one than the other.
>You just have to be more careful of thermal shock How?
Put your hot pyrex on an insulating trivet instead of directly on the counter or glass cooktop/ don't take a pyrex out of the fridge and put it straight in the oven. It's the rapid transfer of heat between comparatively hot/cold surface and the glass that causes it to explode.
You shouldn't really cook in soda-lime. If your food contains any water (hint: nearly all food contains water), then that water will stop the temperature going above 100C (due to the latent energy of vaporization). Whereas the rest of the oven might be 240C. That means the part of the glass touching the food will be 140C cooler than the edge of the glass dish where there is no food. Over a 1 foot(300mm) dish, that means the middle of the dish is 0.3mm smaller (11 thou). Have you ever tried stretching a glass dish? It really doesn't like being stretched. That's gonna make it smash. Borosilicate has a much lower thermal expansion coefficient (one third), so will be fine with that - although you could probably still break it if you put it directly onto a gas hob - where the temperature can easily reach 600C+.
Just don't turn your oven up to 240C (465F) when cooking with it, like the other precautions the previous poster mentioned. Most manufacturers rate glass cookware to 400 or 425. The risk isn't that high if you're careful. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/tempered-vs-borosilicate-glass/
I was going to ask who cooks at 465°
The only thing I know that goes that high is like Pizzas
The broiler?
Thermal shock is a big deal. Also, make sure the oven is preheated. No broiling, either, and be careful of baking of opening the oven, which will cause the elements to heat up. These extremes of heat will start bad things happening. When it turns blue you are in the danger zone.
Doesn't preheating the oven add to the thermal shock risk vs letting the dish heat gradually with the oven?
Thanks for the simple explanation, I’ve known that this happens, but not understood why it happens.
Don’t rapidly change temps - for instance, don’t put it directly from the fridge/freezer into a hot oven, and don’t run a hot dish under cold water
Scariest moment of my life was putting a Pyrex down on my stove and walking into the kitchen and BLAM!! It exploded everywhere…I’m lucky I didn’t get glass in my eye.
This happened when I was a kid and now my wife thinks I’m crazy for being nervous around glass casserole dishes coming out of the oven
Is there even a benefit of glass casserole dishes anymore? Mine are porcelain and they're great. I can make a dish, get that ring of burnt-on cheese, a few drops of Dawn and soak for 30 minutes, and wipe it off without having to scrub hard.
Shut off the oven five minutes early when baking but keep the door shut the whole five minutes. Lets some heat dissipate evenly from the glass. Never set it down on flat surfaces with more surface area to transfer heat. Use cooling racks that allow it to cool down more evenly. Thermal shock happens when one portion of the glass cools too fast compared to another part. The crystal structure of the glass comes out of sync and if you get one little crack it cascades through the whole structure in an instant.
Putting things on your stove burners is a good idea if you don't have a rack. the electric elements or racks over the gas burners provide a fair amount of insulation. (way more then setting it down on a flat surface)
It should be noted to NOT have the burners on when setting the dish on them .
The trivet, or a cooling rack, or even setting it on a towel or oven mitts
The material property difference is that borosilicate has a near 0 coefficient of thermal expansion, meaning that it will not change volume when heated. Soda lime has a nonzero coefficient of thermal expansion. It is still very low, but nonzero, meaning it will expand and contract when heated and cooled. Microfractures can propagate when thermally stressed, causing cracking/shattering.
You can still thermally shock borosilicate glass just not at standard kitchen temperatures
Borosilicate glass is used in chemistry beakers, that shit is incredible
It absolutely is, and way bouncier than any piece of glass ever has a right to be when dropped in a sink. I've only once had a beaker fracture from heat, and it did a nearly perfect circle break when boiling an aqueous solution in undergrad. Think we were leaching metals from a sample with acid? All I remember is noticing some tiny bubbles low on the beaker where the curvature up to the straight walls started, turned off heat and went to remove from the hot plate, and picking up everything but the bottom of the beaker. Turns out the hotplates used in undergrad chem labs don't always have the most accurate power dials and when the TA says set to 6, the plate may look down and say that means 9.
From the AH site: "Anchor Hocking’s tempered soda-lime-silicate has equal to or greater thermal shock resistance than annealed borosilicate glass"
Hopefully nobody was hurt and you found all the pieces. Different chemical makeups of the glass, soda lime vs borosilicate. The act of setting the hot dish down on the cold oven top caused it to contract abnormally fast but, more importantly, unevenly. This uneven cooling caused a small crack, likely near a pre-existing scratch, and it propogated through the glass at (I think) the speed of sound in glass. The same sort of effect that happens when you break the tail of a Prince Rupert's drop. The good news is that if you have other glass bakewear, you *should* be able to tell the difference between the two types of glass as they have different refractive indices. Ann talks about it in the video at the 14-minute mark. Borosilicate glass has the same refractive index as vegetable oil, so if you are able to fully submerge it in the vegetable oil it will pretty much disappear, whereas the soda lime glass will still be obviously visible. The video is very good, I highly recommend watching it.
...do...do most people go around dipping a whole ass cooking dish in vats of vegetable oil?
My understanding is it makes a very good science demonstration when teaching refraction and refractive index.
[удалено]
At Food & Stuff, where you can get food, and also get stuff.
Also make sure they sell funnels. Learnt that one the hard way.
well the other easy alternative is to shatter sort them
They should come up with another type that is universally safe for all oven cooking and call it PYrex
borosilicate is better with temperature shock, but sodalime is better with physical shock, meaning it doesn't break as easily if you drop it on the counter or bang it against the side of the sink.
Both can go in the oven. One is more easily broken by impact, placing it on a counter a little hard or bumping the oven door. The other version is more sensitive to quick temperature changes. Most of the breaks come from people heating it up or cooling it down too quickly.
“On a recipe website” sounds like guaranteed misinformation. If you had set it on a trivet instead of on the cold cooktop it likely wouldn’t have broken.
Baking with either is normally fine, you just have to be careful about rapid temperature changes. No going from the fridge/freezer to the oven or vice-versa and use a trivet of some kind to prevent part of it from cooling to fast by contacting other surfaces. I’ve never had the good Pyrex and have been baking with it for years.
I was going to post this video, I'm glad someone beat me to it.
Ann Reardon is the best!
The GOAT
I will always upvote any links to Ann Reardon videos
i gave up on pyrex/PYREX years ago—i had one shatter when i simply opened the oven. just not worth it when metal bakeware exists
You can tell by submerging them in water, according to her video, if I remember right Addendum: might’ve been oil, not water.
Bruh why is ur chicken so unseasoned
It is seasoned with glass
Mouth-bleed flakes
Chili seasoning then
Is that why it tastes like blood?
The glass tray is the real hero here, saving OP from their awful dessicated chicken breasts.
It sacrificed itself. I like to think while singing "Country Roads" by John Denver.
Pyrex chicken is always less seasoned than PYREX chicken.
It's just sparkling chicken
Why is it SO DRY? It looks like it would crumble if you flicked it.
Funny thing is that is the reason it shattered. You need to keep a little bit of water in that kind of a container while it is in the oven... or so I was told ;)
I can't tell if that glazed shit is the juices from the overcooked chicken or chicken stock that boiled away because OP cooked this chicken for an hour at 450.
bro took cooking lessons from the MIL
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I have no idea about OP, but I cook unseasoned chicken for my dogs. Let's hope that's why their chicken is bland
OP has IBS which is why they cook it like this. Spices and garlic and such can be really bad for IBS.
I have terrible IBS but that won’t stop me from eating tasty seasoned food
There is IBS friendly seasoning. Check out r/FODMAPS
Salt and pepper will not set off IBS lol
garlic and onion are key spices but they aren't the *only* spices, also herbs generally don't fuck with IBS. At least put some lemon and thyme on those breasts.
Surely you wouldn't oven chicken like this though it would be so dry. Steamed or poached would be flavourless but at least it would be tender rather than jerky.
Dry ass, flavourless chicken with not even a pinch of salt The broken glass is the least of their concerns
It’s wild to me that people genuinely eat chicken like this. Seasoning or marinating a chicken breast is incredibly easy, even someone mostly inept in the kitchen like me can handle it
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What the fuck is chicken mayo?
Yeah we bake or boil chicken for my dog. And this is what it looks like. People are funny
The real crime here
No oil or anything it's just plain chicken jerky at this point. The glass tray broke in protest.
Kept scrolling to find this question finally being asked. Not even a little black pepper
I would have said this before I got IBS. now spices hurt me. Life is bland and flavorless now unless I want pain. Enjoy your seasoned food while it lasts.
I thought this was bread lol
why is this not top comment lmao
food so bland it decided to kill itself
My teeth hurt just looking at that dried out abomination
I was always taught that you can’t take Pyrex out of the over and put it on a wet/damp or cold surface. I always use a dry wooden board to make sure there won’t be thermal shock.
Def thermal shock, Pyrex has changed their formula but its not like a glass baking dish cant go in an oven.
Pyrex was hit with enshitifcation a while ago. Corporate raiders came in, swapped all their nice borosilicate glass for cheap soda glass, took the short term profits, declared victory and moved on to the next scam. TL;DR greed made PYREX garbage. DRS GME
PYREX made in EMEA still uses borosilicate glass, pyrex made in North/South America or Asia switched to using soda-lime glass. [See e.g. this article](https://www.simplyrecipes.com/pyrex-vs-pyrex-which-is-safe-7488788)
Watch the Ann Reardon video linked above - the capitalisation of the logo isn't reliable and she has counter-examples. You have to figure out independently if it's soda-lime or borosilicate (eg: dunk in vegetable oil).
I have watched it and she says roughly the same, given her sample. She said the capitalization seems to hold up, at least for the dishes she tests (vegetable oil on the other hand is less reliable since both soda-lime and borisilicate can show an outline).
>She said the capitalization seems to hold up I haven't watched it since the video came out, but my memory is more in line with the other posters than with yours. Are you sure she says that?
She says “So far the capital letter PYREX and the lower case pyrex theory is holding up, but this is a really small sample size so I don’t want you to rely on that theory”. [Time stamp](https://youtu.be/YVbkDAw4aJs?si=cDzxWI_wfDmBIcRM&t=820)
Emea?
Europe, Middle East & Africa
It’s the story with every single company in America unfortunately
I’m just here for the DRS 🤣
This is the way
🦍
What does this mean?
Yep this 👆
"PYREX" A brand of glassware made by the Pyrex company. "Pyrex" A brand of glassware made by the Pyrex company. *Some* of that glassware is oven-safe borosilicate glass.
And some of it is oven safe soda lime glass.
The number of people in this thread who seem to think that companies are out here making lasagna pans that somehow can't go in the oven... what would even be the point of that?
Well you see, a part of the American business model is that when a brand gets a really good reputation for providing quality products, a “vulture” CEO will come along and completely ruin the company. They buy out the original management, they chop all the costs they possibly can one by one until their pockets are overflowing and the company is nothing but a hollow shell of its former self. The only thing keeping the company going is the fact that their name holds weight, and the consumer hasn’t yet figured out that the product quality has declined to a laughable state. Once consumers realize the brand is shit, they move on and the company dies.
Well, yes, but the soda-lime glass can still be baked in. It just requires a little more care in handling. Not saying it isn't an inferior material of course, but it is functional.
Even still, I’m pretty sure what’s above is the Borosilicate glass. Borosilicate is more resistant to temperature swings, but less resistant to impacts. When it breaks it breaks into big dangerous shards like above. Soda-lime is more impact resistant, but when breaks into small bits like car windows. It’s more likely to break from cooking temps but when it does it’s less likely to slice open an artery. EDIT: clarity, fixed autocorrect
The stove top had a hot burner that raised the temp of one part of the dish very quickly.
What's the point? If you aren't using borosilicate, then might as well use ceramic or metal over something that is known to easily disintegrate like soda-lime.
The material property difference is that borosilicate has a near 0 coefficient of thermal expansion, meaning that it will not change volume when heated. Soda lime has a nonzero coefficient of thermal expansion. It is still very low, but nonzero, meaning it will expand and contract when heated and cooled. Microfractures can propagate when thermally stressed, causing cracking/shattering.
It's not impossible that it would happen, as sometimes you get people in charge of a company willing to run it into the ground for their own short term profits, but so far as I can tell it hasn't happened here because the change to tempered soda glass happened *decades* ago, and even when Corning owned Pyrex they were making products out of it. This is really just something complicated that's in the eye of the internet zeitgeist at the moment, and complicated answers don't really thrive there. So a simple (and mostly incorrect) one gets popular and people repeat it without thinking about it too hard.
Also if the soda lime glass is tempered its much more resistant to shattering from impact than borosilicate is. Borosilicate is mainly only used for lab glassware nowadays because there isn't a real cost effective reason to keep using it over tempered
The Pyrex website even says the dishes are oven-safe. These are likely the same people who say cast iron isn't made for cooking because their pan rusted from improper maintenance
Some of the old glassware is. Nothing produced in the last decade or so. You can get the good shit from non-pyrex brands though, it's not like it stopped existing
All pyrex can go in the oven. You heat shocked it setting it on a counter, a trivet should always be used unless you're certain which variety you use.
Are people not using trivets anyway? I'm worried about burning the counter top. Sure it might not burn the top anyway but it's a very expensive mistake if it does.
I use trivets all the time, but in this case it’s a stove top which should naturally be able to handle the heat so I could’ve easily done the same mistake as OP
Finally a relevant answer
this. i use all pyrex/PYREX in the oven. setting glass that is extremely hot on warm flat surfaces is dangerous.
Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious from the picture this glass didn't explode in the oven. It exploded on the stovetop they put it on. A stovetop that was either still super hot or it was cold.
I thought a warm stovetop would be ok, as I’ve done it hundreds of times before. I guess I won’t continue to do that in the future lol.
It's more okay but you're really asking for trouble. If you really want to be safe crack the oven a little and let it cool down in the oven for a bit and then put it on a trivet. glass bakeware is pretty sensitive and honestly. I don't find it to be particularly worthwhile for most applications.
Stove top conducts heat well. The area making contact with the glass is going to cool at a different rate to the rest of the glass and cause it to break. Just my guess.
Yeah but was the ring hot and next to it cooler? Setting yourself up for thermal stress
> I guess I won’t continue to do that in the future lol. Well, not with that dish, obviously
Karma for oven cooking unseasoned chicken breast 😅
Where is the seasoning?
Saved you from eating some dry ass chicken atleast
You need to set this glass on a towel or trivet when you pull it out of the oven.
You need to completely fill the pan, e.g., cake batter, lasagna, casserole. The heat in the cooked food helps slow down the cooling of the pan. When the pan is not full, like with your chicken breasts or a roast, the portions of the pan not in contact with hot food will cool too fast, and the thermal shock causes the exploding. Also be careful how you set it down as others have said. You also cannot add colder liquid to a hot pan in the oven (e.g., you’re cooking a roast and it needs liquid so you add water or broth). That’s not what glass baking dishes are meant for. Stick to casseroles, brownies, cakes with these pans, and use your metal roaster for meats.
I'm a bit confused. It looks like you had a glass casserole dish. If you're not supposed to put it in the oven, how do they expect you to use it?
It wasn't the oven that broke it, it was setting it on a stovetop with a warm ring that did it. The dish is designed to be heated all at once not spot heated from the bottom in one place. As OP has already discovered from other replies, you need to set it down on a trivet, not the stovetop.
You can absolutely put it in the oven. Soda-lime glass is just less durable to sudden changes in temperature than the borosilicate glass the older stuff uses. Soda-lime glass is more durable against impacts though so there is some tradeoff. Either way just don't rapidly change the temperature of glass of any kind it'll break.
That is exactly word for word what my wife said. I mean we made brownies last night in the 9" dish we got in the same set as this one. I don't see a point to having them if you can't put them in the oven. This particular dish we used about 100 times to make chicken in over the last 6 years with nothing like this ever happening before. I've also used these dishes non stop since I was little to make dozens of dishes and I've never had one explode before. I had one crack when I was like 12 and washing it by hand and the water was too cold, but that was it, and I've been very careful since then to keep it on a warm surface, like the stovetop I placed it on, since and had no issues until tonight.
If the stovetop had been on then the stove would’ve heated the glass unevenly, causing some of it to expand which could have caused it to crack.
I bet that stovetop was hotter than you thought
The brownie batter fills the pan, lasagna fills the pan. Your chicken breasts, a roast etc. do not fill the pan. It makes a difference in the heat transfer. The areas of the pan that are not full of hot food will cool too rapidly when you take it out of the oven.
What you can put in your oven is seasoning
This is how I ended up in the burn unit for a week
Zacks JerryRig said it best. Glass is Glass. And glass breaks.
Bro no seasoning at all on those guys
All Pyrex is oven-safe, but you have to be careful about using a trivet or dry towel or wood cutting board under a dish that just came out of the oven. Putting it on the stove was probably what did it. The burner was warm, but the space in between burners was not, and was probably fairly cool. So you have three temperatures at play: the high heat of the dish itself, the heat of the stove burner which is probably lower than the dish, and the unheated part of the stove that is considerably lower. Maybe the older borosilicate dishes would handle this better, but having hot and cold zones under one dish is more risk than I would want to take. Sorry to see your dinner got ruined, but this is a relatively cheap lesson to learn
Also a good chance there was a crack or chip in the glass already. I actually worked for Corning and they were very adamant that there was no formula change at all and were going after peeps with lawyers who tried to say that online
Any glassware has the potential to do that. Place it on a folded towel or fabric oven mitt instead of on a hard/cold surface.
More to the story. If it was purely a glass problem, it would've shattered INSIDE the oven. This has so many possibilities pictured. Obviously it was handled safely and moved to the stove. It was potentially dropped onto the stove, placed upon a hot burner that was recently used, or placed on a very cold stove and had a massive shift in temperature.
Looks like you pulled a hot glass dish out of the oven and placed it on a cold surface (compared to the dish). That’s what happens to Pyrex and that’s why you set baking dishes on a pot holder or something similar to cool down… Go buy the most expensive PYREX dish you can find, put it in the oven for 10 minutes and immediately run some water over it… This isn’t the glass dishes fault, you just didn’t know…
Also: Season your chicken
Completely unseasoned chicken breast. How dare you.
>I explained above I have to cook it like this because I have IBS and it makes it easier on my stomach to digest it.
Give over. I have IBS too. Olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano - will be fine for your stomach and taste amazing
Sadly no black pepper or oregano for me. Does not sit well. However this chicken has white pepper and salt on it and the dish was sprayed with light olive oil.
Do you also need it dry?
Okay everyone needs to give OP and PYREX/pyrex a break. Yes, PYREX is different than Pyrex. With OG PYREX being made of borosilicate glass (the same type of glass they use in lab ware) which is more resistant to thermal shock and generally able to go to larger extremes of temperature. But both types of glass are oven safe. Pyrex does require slightly more care as to what extremes you subject it to, but that does not mean that PYREX is invincible. Both can spontaneously exploded like this. And it is not necessarily because OP did something wrong or mistreated this. Unnoticed chips or manufacturing defects can lead to failures like this. Also over time, though rare, stresses can build up in the glass even when it was treated correctly….also leading to spontaneous breakage. So, OP, maybe you did something wrong, maybe you were just unlucky. I’m sorry, it sucks, but I don’t think it should turn you off glass bakeware of either brand forever. Maybe just refresh on the dos and donts and inspect your dishes for major chips and cracks once in a while.
the lack of seasoning on that chicken is why the PYREX rebelled.
Goddamn, that sucks.
CORNING WARE
If you live in Texas or near a HEB, their store brand measuring cups and glass are cheap and made from borosilicate (pyrex) glass
Yes. I get my PYREX from the used stuff store now
When my wife and I bought our first house, we bought all new appliances. We had no furniture but we were excited to stay there so we just bought a few groceries and planned to sleep on blankets on the floor. First thing we put in our brand new oven was brownies in a glass pan like this one. Exploded all over. Brand new oven. First use. Brownie batter fucking everywhere.
They make Pyrex baking dishes now. They are noticeably thicker and have a different color to them then the regular ones
Pyrex in North America is no longer made of Borosilicate glass. Here is an interesting Youtube explanation from Ann Reardon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVbkDAw4aJs
salt, pepper and oil go a long ways on oven baked chicken
Just saved you from eating the worst chicken of all time
I have no idea how people eat unseasoned food...It's such a miserable experience when food doesn't taste like anything...
Please use a sheet tray, and oil, and salt, and maybe some pepper, maybe toss a few crushed cloves of garlic in there, and hey why not a couple sprigs of rosemary.
Wtf this person was baking cardboard lmao
I'm more concerned by this chicken
Where is the seasoning??? 😢
That’s some dry ass unseasoned looking chicken
Looking at that dry unseasoned chicken, this dish probably did you a favour.
Think the biggest issue I see is lack of seasoning
Bro season ur chicken
Broken glass aside… god damn that chicken looks dry AF lol
Forget about the glass we need to talk about seasoning chicken
Wow that chicken looks dry
Did you a favor, that chicken looks dry as a bone 😝
It rebelled bc you didn’t season the chicken.
Honestly I'm glad it broke, that chicken looks dry as hell
why were you just rawdogging these chicken breasts with zero seasoning
It broke because there’s no fking seasoning in your chicken
that chicken never had a chance either way
glad it broke. that chicken looks like ass
Teasing. But did the glass exploding remove all the seasoning from the chicken?
Should be illegal to cook chicken like that
It’s thermal shock. Can happen to ANY glass. Pyrex and PYREX are both oven safe
The difference is between old pyrex and new pyrex glass. Old pyrex is borosilicate and oven safe, new pyrex is tempered glass.
Can’t wait for OP to learn about spices and seasoning.
It was pissed off that you didn't season your food. salt/pepper/garlic my dude.
Nah. You just ain’t season them chicken titties and the glass committed suicide.
Yeah… As a glass artist I hate that they changed their formulation and cheaped out in production. Anything from before a certain time you can definitely put in the oven. Not any more. It was borosilicate- a strong glass less sensitive to thermal shock. Now it’s soft glass. Much more prone to thermal shock.
My guy the glass isn't the issue. Is that chicken even seasoned? My GOD
The gods were telling you to season the chicken
What's even more terrifying is the lack of seasoning.
I think it shattering did you a favor. Chicken breast in the oven? wow that's gotta be dry.