‘Below Deck Med’ Recap: Chef Mathew “Burned The F**k” Out Of His Fingers

Chef Mathew Shea may have just endured one of the gnarliest galley injuries we’ve ever seen on Below Deck Mediterranean — though his quick thinking likely saved the boat from burning.

While the chef was busy chopping away, he realized that a pan was on fire, quickly grabbing it from the stove and throwing it into the sink, dousing it in water to put the fire out. It looked like the fire nearly got the back of his chef’s jacket too, yikes! But the real problem is that he grabbed the pan with his bare hand — OUCH.

“Holy shit, I burned the fuck out of my finger,” he realizes, running it under cold water, even though his skin was already super charred.

“This charter, with all these women and all these different preference lists, would be hard enough with two hands, and now I only have one good one,” he says in his interview. He continues to groan and say “Ow ow ow” as he wanders around the galley before calling Captain Sandy to let her know what happened.

“I burned my finger pretty bad,” he explains and reassured her that he was genuinely hurt and wasn’t trying to leave (again). She can only respond, “Holy fuck, I mean, that’s pretty bad,” once she gets a look at it, adding “We gotta get that taken care of.” Even Malia White found herself gagging when she saw his hand, saying, “I thought he had iodine on it but that was just his burnt skin.”

Mathew continues to soak his hand in ice water while the doctor is on her way to the boat, and Sandy even admits, “It’s a pretty bad burn, I’m concerned I may lose the chef.”

For his part, Mathew says, “I can’t believe I fucked up like that,” and when chief stew Katie Flood gets a glimpse she lets out a huge gasp and then tells him, “I didn’t mean to make that noise.” It’s hard not to when you see those crispy fingers and that bubbling blister.

Dr. Tea (great name) arrives, and he tells her, “The middle one’s the worst, I grabbed a pan on fire and put it in the sink to put out the flame.” Even the doctor winces when she sees the damage, telling him it’s a second-degree burn. She applies a gel, bandages, and he puts on gloves in order to get back to work. “I can not let this end my season, I’ve come too far, I need to fucking talk myself off a ledge,” he says in his interview.

The deck team comes inside to help him work, as he tells them “I’m in pain,” while keeping one hand in a bowl of ice water and using the other to prep dinner. However, those bacon-wrapped dates and the full feast that made it to the table looked incredible, proving that this guy’s got more talent in just one hand than most people have in two.

Below Deck Mediterranean airs Monday at 9 pm ET/PT on Bravo with episodes streaming one week early on Peacock. 

Stream Below Deck Mediterranean on Bravo Now and Peacock