MasterChef crowns its Champion of Champions 2025

Chef Thomas Frake has been crowned MasterChef’s Champion of Champions 2025 in its festive special.

Frake, who won MasterChef in 2020, took home the winning title after outcooking three former champions – 2013’s Natalie Coleman, 2023’s Chariya Khattiyot and 2024 winner Brin Pirathapan – on the BBC One cooking competition special, MasterChef Festive Extravaganza: Champion of Champions.

The chef, who runs a village pub called The Silks in Marlborough, Wiltshire, said: “This feels amazing. I’m grateful more than anything.

“MasterChef is what got me onto this journey in the first place. To come along five years later and be validated that my food was worthy again of another trophy is incredibly special.

“The first trophy will stay at home, this trophy is going straight to my pub.”

Taking on two demanding challenges, the returning champions had to first deliver an end of the year showstopper for the judges and critic Tom Parker Bowles.

Next they had to prove just how far they have come since they first appeared on MasterChef as amateur chefs, tasked with creating two of the best courses they have ever cooked.

Frake’s final winning menu consisted of a main course inspired by a dish he cooked for Dent in 2020, a roast venison marinated in treacle, served with a venison and pear barley stew, wild garlic puree, charred shallot, bubble and squeak, and a venison and port sauce.

For dessert he made a brioche bread and butter pudding, coated in panko breadcrumbs, topped with butterscotch raisins, in a Pedro Ximenez sherry sauce, served with a brown butter ice cream.

During the judges’ deliberations over all their cooking that day, John Torode, who was a judge on the festive special alongside Grace Dent, said: “I need to be truthful, that was probably the best food I’ve ever eaten in the history of MasterChef.

“That was extraordinary.”

He later added: “Thomas’ love of great British food and what he likes to call pub grub is so infectious that it’s only when you eat his food that you understand what sort of cook he’s become since he’s left the competition.”

Meanwhile, Dent described Frake as a “fascinating chef”.

She added: “He cooks crowd-pleasers absolutely beautifully with loads of finesse and that’s why Thomas is our champion of champions.”

MasterChef Festive Extravaganza: Champion of Champions is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.