Our 2025 recipe hall of surprise is our little corner on surprising.recipes where we look back at the year that was. Which recipes captured the most attention, which ones did people visit, return to, try… and try again? And which new creations joined the family in 2025? And what else unfolded on surprising.recipes along the way? This page gathers it all - a small celebration of the dishes and moments that made 2025 deliciously unexpected.
Most popular in 2025
Getting into the 2025 recipe hall of surprise isn't so easy anymore. Many of our classics have true evergreen potential and keep drawing readers back, season after season, year after year. And yet, in the middle of all those long?time favorites, two more recent recipes managed to gather remarkable traction - enough to earn their place in the 2025 hall of fame. A small reminder that surprise is still very much alive in our kitchen.
The 2025 medalists
For the fourth year in a row we take a surprising start in the day with a banana omelette. Don't throw away the peels! Further down in this list we will also use them. As our recipes are not only surprising, but also sustainable.
Our recipes are not only surprising, but also healthy. Our healthy coconut water smoothie entered the hall of fame in 2024. Only to become more famous in 2025 and move on to a surprising silver place.
On the third place we have our Fiskasúpa - Icelandic fish soup. A real evergreen that makes it into the hall of fame for the fifth time in a row. And seems to be stuck in the third place for the fourth consecutive year.
The place four to ten
New on four and with potential to get into the medals in future: Scampi diabolique - a surprising Belgian recipe. Many restaurants and bistros have this on the menu in Belgium. People love it, and it is so easy to make!
We told you not to throw away your banana peels! Now you can use them. Our Banana peel curry has made it to the list every year since 2020. Now for the first time since 2021 not among the three medalists.
Our favorite surprising appetizer, Boursin bites with smoked salmon stayed on place 6 for the second year in a row. Also spicy roasted pumpkin is a real evergreen appetizer. It keeps its place in this list already for five years.
More surprising.vegetarian now. In homemade tofu from soy beans we learn you how easy and cheap it is to make tofu at home. A batch of tofu is the ideal start for some surprising vegetarian dishes.
We promised two new recipes in this hall of fame. Well, here is the second one: Cuttlefish in red and white. A heavenly seafood recipe that is easy to make and stands out for its colorful contrast with the red tomato sauce.
And we close the list with another really surprising recipe idea: Why do you throw away your onion peels? You can make a delicious Onion peel tea with them! How surprising is that?
Surprising.new in 2025
What's new? 26 times surprising! In 2025 we published 26 new surprising.recipes, mainly in an effort to catch up with gerechtenweb, the original Dutch version with many more recipes. Of course these recipes did not manage yet to get into the 2025 recipe hall of surprise.
We will not explain every single recipe here. For that you can browse through the articles. But you will notice that we have a lot of regional surprises. Of course also some Belgian surprises. But also fish and vegetarian dishes are well represented. And of course we do not leave out surprising appetizers and desserts.
Maybe you will find some of them back in the 2026 recipe hall of surprise...
With this effort we are closing the gap with gerechtenweb more and more, so that both sites have identical contents. Let that be a target for 20206! So many more recipes will be waiting for you! Also contentwise we will improve older recipes and add recipe cards and better pictures where needed.
Previous halls of surprise
You want to dig a bit further into history? then have a look at our previous halls of surprise, going back to 2016.