2025 Great Taste Awards: Winning Spice Blends for Flavorful Dishes
The Great Taste 2025 results are in and this year we won 3 more Gold stars for the Korean chilli crunch, Greek Gryo rub, and the Louisianna Cajun.
Greek Gyro Spice Seasoning
Entry: 1815 / 34
1-Star
A grand combination of spices and herbs here all making their presence felt. The dry mix has a rounded nature, but when cooked the salt does pop a little bit to the fore. Maybe that could be held back just a shade. Overall rather good.
The spice mix sticks well to the chicken. There is a sweetness and warmth in the flavour and it's not too salty. The judges enjoyed it.
Louisianna Cajun Rub
Entry: 1815 / 35
1-Star
A welcome, warming, peppery aroma, which is to be expected with Cajun rubs. Very aromatic when cooked on meat. A wonderful blend of sweet, salty, peppery, earthy and aromatic flavours, all in balance. The flavours last well with nothing fighting against each other. The spice blend tastes of quality and care, a lovely example of Cajun rub.
A well-balanced, well-crafted blend of flavours that is perhaps only guilty of not delivering enough personality. It does deliver a sweetness to the dish, which is clever given the lack of sugar as an ingredient, but it doesn't quite stick its head above the parapet enough to differentiate it from the generic spice blend market.
Beautiful red brick colour spice mix which has a pleasant aroma. Judges felt that even though the spices came together there was a lack of chilli warmth or heat and and and overwhelming amount of salt. We would recommend reviewing the recipe.
A deep red spice mix that has a good paprika flavour in its raw state. Once cooked that flavour disappears and is replaced with a rather too sweet, one dimensional flavour. Sadly this mix did not deliver a spicy cajun flavour as promised.
Korean Chilli Crunch
Entry: 1503 / 66
1-Star
A really rich, inviting hit on the nose. On the palate this delivers an interesting flavour journey, rich and earthy, The identifiable flavour of the seaweed brings a good dimension, that we liked very much, although perhaps breaking the ingredient down slightly would improve the eating experience. There was so much going on, and it all got on well together. To achieve a higher award look at adjusting the size of the seaweed pieces, but also perhaps look to increase the heat slightly to balance with the richness of everything else.
This sounds absolutely delicious and we cannot wait to try it. It has the classic aroma of a chilli crisp oil. On tasting the umami flavour is there with lovely shiitake mushroom notes from the discernible pieces in the mix. There is a little salty seaweed on the finish. We love the idea and we think it has so much potential but we would have liked more chilli and more garlic and more of those umami flavours - maybe a dash more soy sauce - to bring it all together. With a few tweaks, this could be really good.
There are clear marine qualities on the nose and a plethora of onions and garlic sweetening the experience and giving depth. This is well crafted and whilst mild in heat, it all balances on the palate, delivering a delicious mouthful of umami. We imagined many uses and were unanimous in our opinion that the oil is award worthy.
