Jennifer Garner has a cooking confession: She nearly burned down her kitchen this Christmas.
The Alias actress admitted that she had a flambé mishap while making Ina Garten's beef bourguignon during the holiday season. On Wednesday, Dec. 29, Jennifer shared a video of herself pouring Cognac into her stew before lighting it ablaze.
"I'm a little nervous... Remember we are doubling this recipe. I don't know if we need all of this," she said of the 1/2 cup of brandy required. She got her answer moment later when the flames grew out of control for a second as they rose up several inches in the air.
She gave the camera a shocked look before the fire appeared to die down. Jennifer quipped, "A thousand pardons. Don't double the Cognac. Can you believe that just happened? That was wild."
It seems everyone is OK, and she later explained the situation in her caption. "The thing about traditions—all you do to give them meaning is keep them," she wrote on Instagram. "I don't know when I started making @inagarten's beef bourguignon (from Barefoot in Paris) for Christmas, it was long enough ago that the smell of this perfect stew makes me feel happy, cozy, and relaxed."
That comes with a caveat, as Jennifer joked, "until I almost lit the kitchen on fire—Ina would never."
Ina begged to differ. "That's my favorite," she wrote, "And I almost set the kitchen on fire every time!"
The cooking pros proceeded to send their love and wishes for the New Year. See the full video here.
As Jennifer enjoys the holidays with some quality food, her ex Ben Affleck has been spending time with Jennifer Lopez.
Ben recently told Howard Stern that he felt "trapped" in his marriage to Jennifer Garner, which lasted from 2005 to 2018.
"Part of why I started drinking was because I was trapped," he said. "I was like, ‘I can't leave because of my kids, but I'm not happy, what do I do?' And what I did was [I] drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution."
He noted that their marriage simply "didn't work," adding that "she's somebody I love and respect, but to whom I shouldn't be married any longer." Ben later told Jimmy Kimmel that he felt the headlines "made me out to be like the worst, most insensitive, stupid, awful guy."
He shared, "It's the exact opposite of who I am, what I believe and I would never want my kids to think I would ever say a bad word about their mom...it hurts my feelings."