What is Stuzzi Nduja Ketchup And Why Did It Win A Great Taste 2025 Award From The Guild Of Fine Food?

Let's be honest, a good sauce can make or break a meal. Think about your chips without ketchup, or a bacon butty missing its brown sauce. It’s just not the same. But what if a sauce didn't just complete the meal, but made it truly special?

On 29/07/25, a Yorkshire-based team found out their creation does exactly that. The people behind the popular Stuzzi Italian restaurants in Leeds, Harrogate, and Ilkley have just bagged one of the highest honours in the food world. Their Nduja Ketchup has won a 3-star Great Taste 2025 award, and it's a massive deal.

What's the big deal about this award anyway?

Imagine the Oscars, but for food and drink. That’s pretty much what the Great Taste awards are. Run by an organisation called the Guild of Fine Food, it's the most trusted badge of honour for anything edible. Getting an award here means your product has an absolutely amazing taste. This isn't about fancy packaging or a clever name; it's purely about the flavour.

And the competition is fierce. This year, a whopping 14,340 different food and drink products were entered. They go through a really tough judging process to see which ones are good enough to get a star. Here’s how it breaks down:

• 1-star: Awarded to 'food and drink that delivers fantastic flavour'. 3,899 products got this.
• 2-star: Given to products that are 'above and beyond delicious'. 1,508 made the cut.
• 3-star: The top prize for 'extraordinarily tasty food and drink'. Only 273 products in the entire world achieved this.

Stuzzi's Nduja Ketchup is now one of those 273 elite products. It’s a huge win that shouts about the incredible quality of the sauce and the hard work that went into creating it.

So what makes this ketchup so special?

This isn't your average tomato sauce. The magic ingredient is ‘Nduja’ (pronounced en-doo-ya). It’s a spicy, spreadable salami that comes all the way from a region in Southern Italy called Calabria. It gives the ketchup a deep, rich, and slightly fiery kick that you just don't get from anything else. It's the kind of condiment that transforms a simple burger or a plate of pasta into something you’d expect from a top restaurant.

The expert panel of judges, who taste everything without knowing what it is, were blown away. They called the Nduja Ketchup “A grand journey on the palate.” They also praised its “A lovely consistency with great balance, wonderful depth of colour and aroma.” It's clear this versatile condiment was a massive hit. Stuzzi is already known for its incredible Italian restaurants, which have even been recognised by the prestigious Michelin guide, so it's no surprise they've put that same level of care and quality into this retail product.

The story behind the sauce

Every great product has a story, and this one started with a simple idea. Brec Lee, the creator of the sauce from Stuzzi in Leeds, wanted to give people a little piece of the Stuzzi experience to enjoy at home. After a few tough years with lockdowns and rising costs, not everyone can eat out as much as they'd like. This sauce was a way to bring that restaurant quality to everyone's dinner table.

Brec Lee explains the passion behind the project:

“We are completely over the moon to have won a 3 star Great Taste award for our Nduja Ketchup. We set out on a journey to bring a little taste of the Stuzzi restaurants to the dinner tables of our valued customers who maybe couldn’t make it to the restaurant as much as they liked after the impact of the last view years.”

“Whether it be a change in family circumstances, cost of living or since covid we wanted people to still get a slice of the Stuzzi quality and experience. We have endeavoured to bring the same Stuzzi restaurant quality into our products, putting a huge amount of hours and research into creating the Nduja Ketchup specifically. We wanted to create a really unique product with quality running right threw it, A real game changer of a condiment which “Makes Everything Nice” as its stated on the label! To be recognised with a Great Taste 3 star award is a proud moment for us, to be adding the prestigious black and gold 3 star Great Taste badge of honour to our Nduja Ketchup is truly unbelievable and a dream come true“

He also added how much an award like this means for a smaller, independent business.

“Being recognised with a Great Taste 3-star means so much to independent restaurants and producers like us, as it makes all the hard work and determination worth it! Great Taste is the most recognised accolade for taste and quality in the food and drink industry, so it’s a huge milestone in our story!”

How do you even judge 14,000 food products?

It sounds like an impossible job, but the Guild of Fine Food has it down to a fine art. The whole thing is called a blind judging process. This means all the packaging is removed from the products before they get to the judges. They have no idea who made it or what it's supposed to look like. All they have to go on is the actual taste, smell, and texture. It's the fairest way to judge food.

This year, the judging took over 110 days, with more than 500 judges lending their expert taste buds to the task. This expert panel, made up of chefs, food writers, and other pros, tested all the food and drink products submitted from 110 different countries. The Guild also publishes respected magazines like Fine Food Digest and Good Cheese, so they really know their stuff when it comes to amazing food. This rigorous process is what makes the Great Taste award so respected. You can’t buy your way to a win; you have to earn it with pure flavour.

Get your own

If you fancy giving your taste buds a treat, the award-winning Stuzzi Nduja Ketchup is available from the online deli, DELLI, for around £6.50 a bottle. Of course, you can also experience the full Stuzzi magic at their Italian restaurants in Harrogate, Leeds, and Ilkley, where everything is made from scratch using the best English and Italian ingredients.

This Great Taste 2025 award is a stamp of excellence that will be displayed on the bottle until the 2028 awards are announced, so you know you're buying something with proven quality. If you want to discover other award-winning products, the Guild of Fine Food has a full directory on its website. But if you're looking for a condiment that will genuinely change your meals for the better, it seems like Stuzzi’s spicy creation is the one to beat.