I know that Rachel Ray is pretty popular, and I was genuinely looking forward to checking this product out. As a constant baker and the owner of a popular food/recipe blog, I figured this would have a nice little space in my kitchen. Now, having used it about a dozen times, I'm still on-the-fence of how I feel about it. Yes, it looks great. It's distinctive, the color looks great (and orange isn't my thing at all), and you can't help but feel this is certainly fancier then your typical Pyrex. It's lighter then I expected, but it feels fairly durable. I doubt it'd survive a trip to the ground, but that said, I've purchased some baking pans that feel like it won't take too long before it feels brittle. No worries about that with this product at all. I guess my problem comes in that, while this bowl is called a serving bowl, meaning to me I'd only serve, not prepare food in it, it's also oven-safe to 500 degrees and the use of it certainly implies it's use as a casserole dish. In that function, because of how the bowl is made, with the lip or flared edge, whatever one would call it, the top of the bowl is actually wider then the bottom, and that flare out starts almost at the bottom of the dish. For some dishes, this wasn't an issue, but when I made a chicken-and-dumplings-style dish, the filling didn't heat through evenly. The top was finished well before the middle. For baking casseroles, this makes this dish a challenge. It also meant that the cooking area on the bottom of the dish was deceptively small. Yes it is wide and very deep, so you'd be able to cook a great volume of food, I found that while trying to bake chicken breasts, I could only really fit 2 or 3 at a time, seriously diminishing it's practicality for my 5 person household. For heavy dishes, while I don't think the lip of the bowl (which also serve as handles) would break, though I don't think you could hold the dish securely enough with potholders without holding it from the bottom. And, maybe it's just me and the foods I cook, but I found it was sometimes a big hassle to get this clean. It'd take a lot of soaking and scrubbing. I think I'd give this 3.5 stars if I could. It's certainly better then your average dish in terms of looks, and the correctly chosen dishes and casseroles cook beautifully in it... The style and look makes it far more attractive then your standard casserole dish, for sure. But I think, while it certainly is nice to look at, the form serves as more fun then functional. The issues with uneven cooking due to it's flaring from the bottom as well as the deceptively small flat cooking area on the bottom means that I think I'll hang on to this for cooking select dishes or using it as an over-sized serving bowl at family holidays... Which, considering it's title as funky serving bowl, I suppose that means it's doing what it's supposed to do. For casserole baking, I'm still about Pyrex.
