​​Celebrity Chefs Who Have Survived Scary Kitchen Mishaps

The Michelin-winning chef Wylie Dufresne once quipped, "If you cook, you are going to get hurt." Indeed, restaurant kitchens are veritable landmines, often filled with sizzling oil, boiling water, electric appliances, finger-numbing liquid nitrogen, and sharp blades. It doesn't help that these kitchens are notoriously stressful thanks to antsy customers and ticking clocks. It's a miracle that ambulances aren't a more regular fixture at fine dining establishments.

Even the most stringent OSHA regulations and health inspectors can't completely curb the scourge of workplace injuries. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2019 there were 93,800 instances of nonfatal injuries and illnesses in full-service restaurants. There was a higher rate of injuries and illnesses in special food services like food trucks, catering, and food service contracting.

Newbies may be more prone to restaurant slip-ups, but forearm burns and bandaged fingers aren't reserved for novice chefs. Even seasoned celebrities and TV personalities are prone to misadventures in the kitchen, whether they're in restaurants, on television, or cooking outdoors. Here are some celebrity chefs who have endured brutal injuries and accidents on the job.

Before he became a "Chopped" judge and the Food Network series' de facto pasta aficionado, Scott Conant was known for slinging spaghetti at his Manhattan restaurants L'Impero, Alto, and Scarpetta. Racking up three-star reviews meant the chef quickly became a food media darling, and one year, one of Conant's restaurants hosted a holiday party for Food & Wine.

While preparing for the event, Conant was manning a huge pot of hot frying oil when a kitchen mishap struck. "Accidentally, I backed into it and the handle hooked onto my apron," the chef recalled to Business Insider. "As I turned around, the whole pot spilled down my leg. I quickly pulled my pants off right there on the line to stop the burning." As if the intense physical pain wasn't enough, the whole ordeal was embarrassing and, as Conant put it, "awkward." Embarrassing memories, after all, tend to be as punishing and permanent as oil burns. "I still have the scars on my thigh," he added.

Kitchen injuries are inherently dicey (pun very much intended), but what about when they happen under the hot lights of live television? Giada De Laurentiis made a name for herself on the Food Network beginning in 2003, hosting cooking shows like "Everyday Italian" and "Giada at Home." She also became a fixture of the network's live specials, including a 2013 Thanksgiving special featuring Bobby Flay, Ina Garten, and Alton Brown.

While preparing a turkey porchetta dish, the TV personality sliced open her finger and couldn't yell "Cut!" Instead, she leaned over to Garten and told her what happened. "I think everybody kind of freaked out," De Laurentiis told Today. "We don't do live television usually on Food Network. These things usually just get hidden."

De Laurentiis managed to sneak off during a commercial break to get medical attention, ultimately receiving a few stitches. "The problem is I sliced into my nail bed," she added. "And you know I love my manicures." De Laurentiis' colleagues managed to squeeze in some gentle ribbing, with Brown joking on Twitter that they found her finger in the stuffing.

In the kitchen, fingers and hands are the most injury-prone appendages when it comes to knife cuts. In the case of Bon Appétit and Epicurious' food director Chris Morocco, feet can be just as vulnerable. The cook shared an anecdote with Bon Appétit in which he was cooking dinner at his apartment in Brooklyn. "I was cooking barefoot and managed to knock the food processor blade off of the counter," Morocco recalled. "It fell perfectly right on the top of my foot and opened up a wide gash because of the serration and gravity, it just penetrated."

Morocco wasn't sure whether the wound required an ER visit, so he texted a picture to his surgeon brother-in-law, who insisted on dressing the wound himself. Morocco hopped in a cab to his brother-in-law's apartment, where he promptly received a tetanus shot, stitches, and painkillers. Morocco summarized the experience: "You've got to respect the kitchen."

These days, Matty Matheson is perhaps best known for playing Neil Fak on "The Bear." But fans of his wildly popular YouTube channel are well aware of the chef's culinary prowess and brash on-screen persona. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that the rough-and-tumble Matheson has more than a few kitchen mishaps under his belt, several of which occurred while he was the executive chef at Toronto's Parts & Labour.

Two weeks before the restaurant opened in 2010, Matheson was prepping a staff meal of egg salad sandwiches. As he was draining the pot of boiled eggs, hot water cascaded down his leg into his boot. Matheson ripped off his boot and wool sock, accidentally tearing off some skin as well. The chef soaked his foot in ice water and went back to work. When he sought medical attention after service, the doctor informed him that he had third degree burns. As Matheson explained to the doctor (via CTV News), "I just had to keep going here for a bit, because I was just like, you know, people need salads and stuff."

Sometimes a kitchen mishap can occur outside of the constraints of an actual kitchen. In Matheson's case, an outdoor wedding sufficed. The chef was tasked with manning the grill, but after too much wedding fun and sun, he cranked the gas and didn't light the fire, per Complex. One lit cigarette was enough to create a fireball, knocking the chef off his feet and singeing his eyebrows.

Compared to a restaurant kitchen, the on-set kitchens of "Rachael Ray" and "30 Minute Meals" were efficient, even placid settings. Still, the longtime TV personality insists that burns and scrapes are inevitable, no matter the environment. "I've cut and burned myself a thousand times," she said on the "Rachael Ray Show" website. "It's just one of the laws of averages when you work around flames and sharp objects your whole life."

In one instance, Ray managed to cut herself when she wasn't actually handling food. Ray, known for her bubbly on-air persona, managed to clip her finger with her knife while she was animatedly gesticulating.

For Ray, kitchen mishaps are integral to her rise to fame. At the beginning of her television career, the nascent cook shot a pilot on Emeril Lagasse's set. She was so nervous she didn't notice how hot the pan had gotten when she added oil to it, resulting in a plume of flames in the studio.

Nowadays, Curtis Stone knows his way around a kitchen, thanks to his multiple Michelin starred restaurants and stints on shows like "Crime Scene Kitchen" and "Top Chef Masters." But when the Aussie chef was an up and comer in London, he learned the hard way that some appliances require some more know-how than others.

In an exclusive interview with Mashed, Stone recalled the time he accidentally set fire to a restaurant called Bluebird in London. During his first week on the job as Bluebird's new executive chef, Stone wanted to revive the kitchen's stately wood fire oven that had not been touched in a few years. In an effort to show off the oven's capabilities, Stone hosted his sister and a group of her friends for a lavish meal.

Stone cranked the heat, but as the night went on, he noticed plumes of smoke beginning to build in the back room — and thanks to a window looking into the kitchen, the restaurant patrons did as well. When it was clear that the kitchen's fire extinguisher wouldn't get the job done, Stone rang the fire department. The guests were fine, but Stone was mostly embarrassed that he had almost destroyed a priceless building. "This AAA rated heritage building was literally on fire," Stone recalled. "And thank God we put it out, but that was a pretty big disaster."

No disrespect to the knife, but a chef's most formidable adversary might be the humble mandoline. This underrated tool — used to produce uniform, impossibly thin slices of foodstuffs — is public enemy number one for chefs' fingers. Alex Guarnaschelli learned the hard way that mixing mandolines with reality TV can be especially dangerous.

Guarnaschelli is no stranger to the high-pressure environment of competitive cooking shows, having been a regular fixture on "Chopped" and "Iron Chef America." On her most recent series, "Alex Vs. America," the chef tangoed with a mandoline. Partway through the Season 2 episode "Alex Vs. Brunch," Guarnaschelli sliced off the tip of her finger while cutting sunchokes. Like a true competitor, Guarnaschelli was more concerned about the ongoing battle — and the success of her show — than her finger. "So the producer is saying to me, 'What do we do here? How do we handle this? Because this show is called 'Alex Vs. America.' And you're at the sink trying to stop yourself from bleeding,'" she recalled to People. "So I said, 'Let the clock go. Let her run.' And I just waited and waited. I was cursing, and I was mad, and I was embarrassed."

Guarnaschelli took five minutes to get her finger bandaged before getting back in the game, though she admits her fingertip isn't quite round anymore. She continued, "That little mandoline plays you like a mandolin."

Born in the Philippines and raised in the South Bronx, Harold Villarosa has worked everywhere from McDonald's to Bon Appétit to Michelin starred kitchens. His main safety tip? "You gotta be aware of the other people in your kitchen," he told Bon Appétit. "Say behind, say corner, say hot." Villarosa learned that lesson the hard way, when an employee left a sheet tray on top of a double stacked oven. Unbeknownst to Villarosa, the tray was full of hot bacon fat. When the chef angrily removed the tray, the hot oil poured down his arm. Within 30 seconds, his skin began bubbling up.

Eager to get back to work, Villarosa skirted conventional medical wisdom. He popped the bubbles with his knife and ripped off the excess skin. "And then I put the ointment on that, wrapped it up [in] Saran Wrap," he recalled. "And then I went and worked service." The wound took six months to heal. Per the Mayo Clinic's suggestion, burn blisters should be kept intact to help protect against infection. Under no circumstances — even the stress of a brunch shift — should you pop them with a knife.

Villarosa immediately fired the chef who left the tray in such a compromising position, "because that was dangerous, man." Still, his insistence on getting back to work is a familiar line among stressed chefs. As Villarosa put it, "Who's gonna work that station?"

Injuries are a regular fixture in restaurant kitchens, and no medium salivates at capturing that gritty reality on camera quite like competitive cooking shows. On the most recent season of "Top Chef," it wasn't exactly a kitchen injury that bested Savannah Miller. Rather, the Durham, North Carolina-based chef badly cut her hand while cooking on the beach.

In Episode 10 of the Wisconsin-set season, the chefs are introduced to traditional fish boils, in which white fish, potatoes, and onions are boiled together in a giant outdoor pot. Kerosene is then poured on the flame to ignite a fireball, sending any fish scum to overflow outside the pot. Surprisingly, the fireball didn't do any damage during the challenge. But a slip of the knife forced Miller to exit early and seek medical attention, after her co-competitors helped her finish her dish. The cut was so deep that first aid didn't suffice, and Miller was sent to the hospital. Fortunately an impressive showing in the first round kept Miller from being sent home. The chef continued to wear her bandage for subsequent episodes, proving that her cut was no simple nick.

Over the course of its 21 seasons, "Top Chef" has shown the gamut of kitchen (and kitchen-adjacent) accidents beyond just knife cuts. In Season 8, the All Stars' fryer catches fire and the chefs must evacuate for the fire department, and in Season 9, Sarah Grueneberg suffers from heat exhaustion while manning a hot pot outdoors and is hospitalized.

With fryer fires and third degree burns to worry about, it is easy for some chefs to shrug off seemingly small knife cuts. Chef Leah Cohen did exactly that and paid the price. Cohen is known for her appearances on Season 5 of "Top Chef," "Chopped," and "Beat Bobby Flay." One day while working at her acclaimed restaurant Pig & Khao in Manhattan, the chef was cutting up sirloin and accidentally nicked her thumb. She rushed to the ER and got five stitches. A week later when the stitches were ready to come out, Cohen still couldn't bend her thumb. "I didn't have time to go to the doctor so mom took out the stitches," she told Business Insider.

Another week passed and Cohen still had trouble moving her thumb. "A specialist confirmed I had cut the tendon in my thumb and had to have surgery," she continued. Tendons are strong cords of tissue that connect muscles to bones, the interplay of which allows for a range of motion. Extensor tendons run from your forearm to the back of your hand and fingers, allowing you, as Cohen learned, to straighten your fingers. Extensor tendons lie just under the skin, making them susceptible to injury by knife cuts.

"A specialist confirmed I had cut the tendon in my thumb and had to have surgery," Cohen added. "I wore a cast for five weeks and then had to do physical therapy for two months — all from that one cut."

Known for his love of fermentation and kitchen hijinks, Brad Leone made a name for himself as Bon Appétit's goofball test kitchen manager turned YouTube star. The YouTube series "It's Alive!" saw Leone show off his kitchen chops making sourdough bread and sauerkraut. Leone frequently left the kitchen for his series, whether it was to go noodling for catfish with Matty Matheson or to learn how to make chocolate in Ecuador.

Leone admitted that more of his cooking injuries happened during these outdoor excursions than they did in the kitchen, citing one camping episode in particular. While cooking breakfast over a campfire, Leone went to work slicing potatoes with — you guessed it — the dreaded mandoline. "I was just on autopilot going and going and going," Leone recalled to Bon Appétit. "All of a sudden there was a quarter inch coin of Brad's fingertip in the potato. Blood everywhere." The mandoline was brand new and razor sharp — the perfect tool to lob off Leone's finger. "I'm pretty good with injuries and stuff like that," Leone added. "But ... I got a little light-headed from it."

In cooking and show business alike, the show must go on, and the "It's Alive!" crew jumped into action to ensure their shoot could continue, suiting up Leone in a makeshift bandage of newspaper and electrical tape. Two hours later, through considerable throbbing and pain on Leone's end, they wrapped up the episode.

Ralph Pagano has found success as a television personality, appearing on shows like "Hell's Kitchen," "Pressure Cook," and "Iron Chef America." He is also known for the large culinary footprint he has left on the state of Florida; the chef owns a number of restaurants around the Sunshine State, including his Naked Taco chain.

Pagano was set on expanding his empire when disaster struck. While Pagano was test running the gas burners at a new restaurant in Bimini, Bahamas, they exploded with the chef standing squarely in the blast. Pagano suffered second and third degree burns on nearly 40% of his body. He was hospitalized for 50 days and underwent a number of skin grafts and surgeries.

According to FEMA, there are roughly 5,900 restaurant kitchen fires reported to fire departments every year, causing dozens of injuries and millions in damages. Cooking equipment like ranges and fryers are frequently the culprit.

For Pagano, the 2017 accident gave him a new lease on life. "My life has turned positive with what people consider a negative thing," the chef told the Miami New Times. "For lack of a better word, that was a wake-up call for me. My wife and the kids are my life. Everything else takes a back seat."