‘Holiday Wars’ Host Jeff Mauro’s Biggest Food Network Mishap Nearly Cost Him a Finger

Jeff Mauro’s Food Network career got off to a rocky — and painful — start.

The Holiday Wars host, 45, scored his own show, Sandwich King, after winning season 7 of Food Network Star in 2011. “The then–head of programming flew in to watch my first episode, to Chicago, where we were filming, and I was chopping cilantro with a brand new, super-sharp, beautiful knife,” Mauro exclusively told Us Weekly on Thursday, December 14. “And I went to go swipe the cilantro, like we tend to do, off the knife, and I just misjudged it. And when I swiped it, the cilantro came off with some of my thumb.”

The injury caused the entire set to “shut down production,” Mauro explained. “Someone's like, ‘Find the thumb,’ you know, not the whole thumb, but like, ‘Cauterize it. Get it on,’” he recalled. “But we had to seriously shut it down for hours to kind of wait for the bleeding to stop. And then, for continuity, you couldn't have a Band-Aid. It's a whole thing that I learned about.”

As for the lesson the chef took from the incident? “If you are going to cut yourself, make sure it's the first take of the day, not the last one,” he joked.

Stars Who Have Had Their Own Cooking Shows Over the Years: Selena Gomez, Florence Pugh and More

The head of programming who was on set eased Mauro’s worries by revealing he wasn’t the only star to have a cutting board mishap. “[They said], ‘You know, Rachael Ray cut her finger for her first day on her first take on the first episode of her show,’” Mauro told Us.

With his biggest on-set mishap out of the way, Mauro went on to host Sandwich King from 2011 to 2014 before appearing on several other cooking shows, including Guilty Pleasures, Cooks vs. Cons, Chopped, The Best Thing I Ever Ate, Beat Bobby Flay and Worst Cooks in America. He also served as a cohost on The Kitchen from 2014 to 2022.

Now, he’s bringing holiday cheer to Food Network as the season 5 host of Holiday Wars. “You can watch any of these culinary competition shows on Food Network and nothing compares to these, just the magnificence of these sometimes 7-foot [sculptures],” he shared.

The series sees teams of cake and sugar artists face off to create delicious holiday-themed displays. Ahead of the season finale on Sunday, December 17, Mauro teased that this week is where “these teams that remain have just swung for the fences,” adding, “The faces of the characters get more detailed, and at the end of the day, I get to eat it all. How much fun is that? You can't go to a normal museum where there's art on display and eat it.”

Celebrities Decorate for Christmas 2023: Stassi Schroeder, The Bachelor’s Caila Quinn and More

In addition to hosting a holiday-themed competition show, Mauro is gearing up to host “70-something people” for Christmas. “I'm an international star of stage, film and television. I'm extremely famous. I've been nominated for a Daytime Emmy, but I don't have a mansion. You see?” he joked. “So, I can't host everybody unless I put half of them in the basement, the one in a tub and three outside freezing around the fire. So, we all congregate to a local place that can fit us all.”

Despite the family chaos, Mauro told Us that he enjoys changing up his Christmas Eve menu every year rather than sticking to the classic Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes. “We'll do shrimp. We'll do maybe a salmon. A fried shrimp, we always have, but I change it up,” he noted. “I'll do Mexican [on] Christmas Eve, I'll do Greek, I'll do Americana with fried chicken and mac and cheese. It keeps me excited to make the menu not just repeating the old standbys. And if people complain, you're out.”

The season 5 finale of Holiday Wars airs on Food Network Sunday, December 17, at 9 p.m. ET.

With reporting by Christina Garibaldi