The Best Grocery-Store Strawberry Jam in Canada

Personally, I’m more of a raspberry preserve person, but when it comes to our pantry taste tests, we have to listen to the people—and the people really love strawberry jam. As a quick stroll down the breakfast aisle of any grocery store will attest, it’s the top-selling preserve globally, with North America taking most of the market share. There are seemingly endless options. We’re here to sort them out for you.

Jam, Jellies, and Preserves: What’s the Difference?

Jellies, to start, are made from the strained juice of a fruit and tend to be denser than more spreadable jams and preserves. They’re clear, seedless and chunkless—completely without pieces in it. Jams (the type we’re trying), on the other hand, use processed fruit: chopped, pureed or mashed, usually but not necessarily always macerated beforehand. Preserves tend to feature whole or larger pieces of fruit.  

While you’ll likely find these terms more useful in home canning recipes and deciding what to make, they also differentiate products on a grocery store label with significant—and federally regulated—specifications. There are a lot of rules around sugar and fruit content when calling a product what it is, but we’ll focus here on the words jam and spread. According to The Food and Drugs Act, jam must contain 45 percent fruit, and a brix (or dissolved liquid sugar percentage) of 66. Anything under those ratios must legally be called a spread, which is why you’ll notice some brands advertising spreads as low-sugar—compared to the legal standard for jam, they are. 

How We Tested the Strawberry Jams

In over a year of conducting our pantry taste tests, we’ve refined our methods a bit: We conduct blind tests where possible, always on the same day, with as many brands as possible, prepared under the same conditions. Doing this has taught us that some grocery staples, by nature, differ wildly in quality and flavour, while others do not. Given how tightly regulated jams are, we found that most of the options were just…fine. Some were really delicious, but they were never truly terrible or shocking, and many were quite serviceable if used for a secondary purpose such as baking into cookies. 

Rather than provide tasting notes on each, I’ve divided what we tasted into three categories—with notes on our top winners, and one little note about brand expectations. There needed to be at least a bit of drama!

Perfectly Fine

While these grocery aisle options didn't make the top cut, they were rated as perfectly fine in uses where jam is playing second fiddle as an ingredient: a trifle filling, ice cream condiment or other dessert use.

Lifesmart Naturalia Strawberry Spread, $5 for 250ml

Dora Classic Strawberry Jam with Pectin, $4 for 500ml

Irresistibles Strawberry Jam, $4 for 500ml

Selection Strawberry Jam, $5 for 500ml

President’s Choice Pure Strawberry Jam, $7 for 500ml

A Little Nicer

St. Dalfour Strawberry Spread, $7 for 225 ml

No Name Strawberry Jam with Pectin, $5 for 500ml

Longo’s Organic Strawberry Jam, $5 for 365 ml

Farmboy Strawberry Jam, $5 for 250ml

Bonne Maman Strawberry Jam, $6 for 250ml

More than a few editors expected to be able to immediately identify Bonne Maman’s pure strawberry jam the way its iconic gingham-check packaging can be spotted from across a grocery aisle. To our surprise, no one did—and at least one tester was convinced upon trying it that what they were tasting was Smucker’s. 

Our Top-Shelf Picks

Smucker’s Pure Strawberry Jam, $6 for 500ml

This classic name-brand jam was the sweetest of the top three performers, but editors liked its slightly floral flavour, bright red colour and lighter consistency.

Compliments Pure Strawberry Jam, $6 for 500ml

Compliments produced one of the few jams that boasted something closer to a whole-fruit preserve texture that editors actually liked; entire strawberries you can scoop out of the jar and directly onto a piece of toast, without too much sugar.

Greaves Strawberry Jam, $6 for 250ml

This cottagecore-branded confection from Niagara-on-the-Lake eked out first place by a single vote. Tasters loved the fruit-over-sugar flavour, the smooth and spreadable texture, and the fact that while this preserve boasted plenty of seeds, it didn’t at all feel crunchy. If you’re looking for an everyday jam that stands on its own against just bread and butter, any of these top three would do well—but Greaves would be our pick.

How we select our products. We’re committed to finding the best and most accessible pantry ingredients, and that means being able to test and judge them fairly: in the same place, at the same time, under the same conditions. This means not every single brand available on the national market is going to make it to our Toronto-based kitchen. Some items are only regionally available in a specific province, while others are priced well out of the average grocery budget. Here’s what we guarantee: at least half of our picks will always be available nationally, we will always include selections from major grocery store chains. And if there’s a pick you really think we missed, we’d love to hear about it: letters@chatelaine.com.