Let me start this off by saying that I have, what I believe is, a very rational fear of ovens. I hate them. I’m not a huge fan of the stove top either. But at least on the stove I can see the fire, see what I’m cooking. The oven is just this hot box of gas and heat and death…all hiding behind a pretty white door.

Maybe when I get rich, I’ll design a kitchen made of glass where I can see my impeding death from all angles. But I digress…

A few months ago I made my first attempt at baking a chicken. I’ve cooked chicken, literally every other way. But I’ve never baked one because of the whole oven phobia. Anyway, I made a lovely sage and parsley pesto and spread the pesto under the skin of the chicken. I just knew this was going to be good. But 15 minutes into cooking that stupid bird, I realized that the apartment was really hazy.

I turned off the oven and pulled out the bird, which was smoking (or so I thought) and sat defeated for a half hour. But suddenly it came to me that I didn’t see smoke wafting from the oven. It was steam. I realized that the chicken hadn’t thawed completely and the water that started to pool in the baking dish was producing steam.

So I put that puppy back in the oven and prayed for the remaining hour and a half of baking. It actually turned out tasty AF.

Fast forward to my latest attempt at baking. I decided to make the sage chicken again. I made sure it was thoroughly thawed this time. I preheated the oven to 450° and put the bird in the same baking dish I’d used before (a pyrex one…more on this shortly).

The recipe calls for the chicken to bake at 450° for 30 minutes and then 350° for an hour and a half. After the first 30 minutes were up, I got up to turn down the temperature. I’d also planned to open the oven door to check on the chicken. But as I approached the kitchen I hear a loud bang.

MAYDAY! MAYDAY! RED TEAM GO!

My first instinct is to run screaming from the apartment because I was sure I was enveloped in flames. But I stopped myself, walked over to the oven, turned it off and opened the door. What did I see? THIS:

What did I do? Well, first I took pictures because this shit was in dire need of documentation. Then, with the oven door open, steam and smoke still billowing out, I poured myself a glass of wine and sat staring at the chicken. I dreamed of what it would have been like to eat it…how good it was going to be. And I mourned it.

I called my mother in law who is a kindred spirit in all things accidental and catastrophic. Only she would understand. We hypothesized about what could have caused it and she told me that she’s pretty sure glass shouldn’t go above 350°. Well there you have it. I basically tried to kill myself. But there would be no chance of me offing myself with an exploding pyrex again because the dish was completely destroyed and I made a promise to myself to not buy another one.

After having to throw away a beautiful chicken, I refused to be undone by this. So for a third time, I made this recipe.

Ingredients:

Pesto:

1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/4 cup chopped fresh sage 1

/3 cup fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth

2 tablespoons chopped walnuts, toasted

1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 garlic cloves, peeled

Chicken:

1 (7-pound) roasting chicken

Cooking spray

Lo Note: I happened to have some leftover chopped red onion from a different recipe and didn’t want it to go bad, so I threw about 1/8 cup of the onion in the pesto.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450°.

2. To prepare pesto, combine first 7 ingredients in a blender or food processor; process until smooth.

3. To prepare chicken, remove and discard giblets and neck from chicken. Rinse chicken with cold water; pat dry. Trim excess fat. Starting at neck cavity, loosen skin from breast and drumsticks by inserting fingers, gently pushing between skin and meat. Rub pesto under loosened skin and over breast and drumsticks. Lift wing tips up and over back; tuck under chicken. Place chicken, breast side up, on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray.

Lo Note: Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES are you to use any glass bakeware.

4. Bake at 450° for 30 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350° (do not remove chicken from oven); bake an additional 1 1/2 hours or until a thermometer registers 180°. Let stand 10 minutes. Discard skin.

And it came out so good. Please note I did not discard the skin, the skin is the best part of the MF chicken…what a dumbass instruction.

The moral of this story is that trying new things may be scary but not even exploding glass will keep me and tasty ass chicken apart.

Recipe inspiration found HERE.

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About that Time the Pyrex Exploded in the Oven