WoW Food: Six trends to watch for in 2025

If you’re already putting hot honey on everything and are sipping pickle juice – congratulations: you’ve completed the food trends of 2024 challenge. Are your tastebuds ready though for what’s coming in 2025, asks ELLA WALKER.

While there’s no way to predict what’s going to explode on TikTok as the year unfolds (who would’ve guessed cucumbers and cottage cheese would have had such a moment over the last 12 months), these things should definitely be on your radar…

1. Chilli sauces

Chances are, you already have a jar or two of different chilli sauces in your fridge. Even households that mainly rely on ketchup will likely have at least one bottle of sriracha snaffled away somewhere.

We have become chilli fiends and there appears to be no limit to the number of spicy condiments we’re willing to try – hence why Brooklyn Beckham’s Cloud23 sauces in Hot Habanero and Sweet Jalapeño have been such a sell-out.

If you are overloaded with crispy chilli oils and yet want even more sauce to fire up your meals, consider pilpelchuma – the Libyan chilli paste which is packed with roasted peppers, chilli, garlic and lemon juice.

2. Dumplings

A moreish meal in an expertly crimped edible wrapper? Or which you can eat multiple in one sitting? Dumplings really have it all. According to Whole Foods, we’re going to be increasingly scoffing them, in all forms, in 2025. Which will be absolutely no hardship if you ask us.

Whether as xiao long bao (Chinese soup dumplings), pierogi (Polish dumplings) or tamales (steamed Mexican corn dumplings), these little stuffed parcels are the ultimate convenience food, but somehow always feel quite light and dainty.

Explore the freezer section in your local Chinese supermarket for all sorts of fillings, and even your local supermarket.

Feeling adventurous? They’re also very satisfying to make at home.

3. Fibre

Whole supermarket fridges are now dedicated to kefir – that’s how mainstream gut health and all things fermented have become.

If you’re well up to speed on the health and tangy taste benefits of kombucha, kimchi and sauerkraut, 2025’s addition to your gut microbiome may sound less exciting, but it’s absolutely vital for your gut’s flora and fauna: fibre.

You might have been on the Weetabix and Fruit & Fibre for decades, but it’s time to mix things up by adding fancy jars of beans to soups and stews, leaving the skin on fruit for an extra fibre-boost, and swapping white flour for wholemeal or rye flour when baking.

Your cakes will take on a lovely nutty flavour.

4. Snacks from around the world

The same old trusty favourite treats you’ve been grabbing from the garage forever just won’t cut it anymore.

You’ve probably already noticed in your nearest corner shop that you can now easily get hold of sweets that used to be the highlight of going on holiday abroad, like Mentos and Swedish Fish, but things are set to ramp up even more in 2025.

We want random crisp flavours from across the globe (peanut Curlys from Germany! Hot chilli and lime Takis from Mexico! Cheetos from the US), we want sweets that make Tangfastics look tame, and the kinds of KitKats they get as standard in Japan!

We might not have to catch a single plane in pursuit of new snacks this year.

5. Sour cherries

Fresh cherry season flashes by in summer, the glossy punnets start appearing in June, and by the end of July, they’re heartbreakingly gone.

Or you keep persevering through August, but they just aren’t as flavourful.

But get a taste for sour cherries and you can support your cherry habit all year long.

Nab them dried to use in cakes and biscuits, or go super sophisticated and buy them in syrup, like Italian Fabbri Amarena cherries.

Online cook shop Sous Chef is predicting these babies (made using the same family recipe since 1915) will go from a niche, much-loved ice cream topping to an iconic brand this year.

It’s sweetness with a sour edge.

6. Yuzu

We’re set to really get into sourness in 2025.

Alongside your new obsession with sour cherries, make room for yuzu – Mintel has named it a flavour to watch in its 2025 Global Food and Drink Trends report.

Largely considered a cross between a mandarin orange and a lemon, you might have spotted the zingy citrus fruit on cocktail menus and on Japanese restaurant menus, but it’s going to be crossing into our homes a bit more from now on.

Traditionally found in sake and ponzu (a citrusy soy sauce), expect to spot it in mayonnaise, in marinades for fish and meat, and in kosho, a fermented Japanese chilli condiment – which ticks your gut health, chilli sauce and sour boxes all in one go.