Everybody stay calm! The official chili recipe made famous by Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner) on The Office has finally found a home — in Peacock’s terms and conditions.
A fan of the iconic series posted a TikTok video of them going through the lengthy agreement before stopping at the step-by-step explanation on how to make Kevin’s famous dish. “Is it because no one ever reads these??” the social media user captioned the clip on February 17, noting that the terms and conditions return after the cooking instructions are finished.
The Office fans were originally introduced to the recipe during season 5 of the NBC series, which aired from 2005 to 2013. In episode 26, Kevin explains the history behind his special creation that he brought to Dunder Mifflin for his coworkers to enjoy.
“At least once a year, I like to bring in some of my Kevin’s Famous Chili. The trick is to undercook the onions. Everybody is going to get to know each other in the pot. I’m serious about this stuff,” he stated in the episode’s cold open, which aired in April 2009. “I’m up the night before, pressing garlic and dicing whole tomatoes. I toast my own ancho chilies. It’s a recipe passed down from Malones for generations — it’s probably the thing I do best.”
The teaser for the episode, titled “Casual Friday,” finished with Kevin tripping and spilling his chili all over the floor. He attempted to scoop the hot dish back into the pot, but it didn’t work.
Baumgartner, 49, previously opened up about what went into shooting the hilarious scene.
“One take. They call me the ‘One Take Wonder.’ Everyone calls me that,” the Georgia native exclusively told Us Weekly in April 2020. “They had three pots. They had to put a piece of carpet over the other carpet. And so they had gigantic pieces, because it was a mess and they knew it was gonna be a mess. So three gigantic pieces.”
The actor noted that he was given only “three chances” to get the sequence right, adding, “They came to me before and were like … ‘After that we’re done, there’s no more to [do]’ But after doing it once, the hardest part was the actual spilling. Making sure that that looked real and it was. How filthy I was, like my hands were stained kind of [with] that chili brown color.”
Baumgartner’s former costar Angela Kinsey admitted that the scent from the vegetables wasn’t easy to get away from.
“We went out after,” Kinsey, 50, told Us at the time. “Me and Brian and Oscar [Nuñez]. We did this for a long time. We still do. We try to have a reunion accountants’ dinner. And Oscar and I were waiting on Brian because he said he had to shower and wash his hands so many times. But when he got there, he reeked of chili.”
