What is the Best Strawberry Spread at the Supermarket?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] strawberry is america's favorite flavor of jam's jellies and preserves and today jack's going to tell us which one is best yeah so this is a really interesting taste test you can dig in whenever you want all right it's a good example of when did something so simple get so confident there's all kinds of terminologies jams jellies spreads preserves we tasted them all we started with a very big lineup that you see here next to me we whittled it down to six brands that we liked the best and basically we were cross testing within the same brand different products so for instance smuckers makes six different strawberry products um some are jam some are preserves and so they have to do with the type of fruit the size of the pieces whether they're chunks whether they're not chunks the ratio of sugar to fruit if it's called a spread it means there's other fruit in it where they may be instead of sugar using fruit juice you're having a good time there yes well i wanted to see what the consistency was so i'm stirring them each and this one has some big chunks in here i think she thinks i hid something in the bottom always a little suspect what we're looking for is big strawberry flavor accompanied with a fair amount of sugar and a fair amount of acidity because all of that actually makes things taste better that acidity really perks up all the flavors and so the brands we sent them all out to the lab to be analyzed for the amount of acidity that had less acidity kind of had more nuanced or subtle flavor they weren't bad but it was just more subtle second thing is texture now this you're at a bit of a disadvantage because the texture test was more important in peanut butter and jelly where we put it on the sandwiches and then you know had people uh press down on them and the jelly was coming out the sides if it was too thin so that's a problem and then in cookies so we did little jam thumb prints and again the brands that were really stodgy really kind of seems stodgy in all of these different applications the texture here that we're looking for is something that's not too runny not too thick so it would be beautiful on toast it'll work well in a cookie or in a sandwich so i've given you a chance to sample um the colors are different how about the flavors the one in the center you get chunks of strawberries which i like especially if it was going on a piece of toast this is by far my favorite sample tastes like strawberry it's pretty sweet that i have to say it's pretty sweet but i don't mind that these two don't have a strong strawberry flavor and you're saying sometimes they have other fruits involved i thought maybe these did because it wasn't very strong they're also this one's very has you know it's really a natural color it's such a nice um i'm saying that it's not bright red it's not bright red i still liked it this one i really had a mild flavor its consistency was i don't know neither here nor there i really didn't like this one at all where this one i think i would wouldn't mind putting on a piece of toast so my favorite by far in the middle this one a distant second and this one third okay yeah you want to see where you went yeah let's start with the winner yeah and you agreed with the expert panel this is smuckers strawberry preserves oh so the chunks the chunks which you know give it a nice texture all of the tasting notes were wow big strawberry flavor these are actually california berries they wouldn't tell us what variety but they said they are all being sourced out in california and it just had a really nice fruit flavor now the studio audience interestingly this was their second choice once you get down to the end here this is from stonewall kitchen this has less sugar and my theory is that we have some very not sweet people in the audience what do you think oh man i just i think that's a nice thing he just said but the sugar does bring out the fruit flavor that's why the smuckers is the one that you like so much in the expert panel like the most and last so this is crafters this is one of these spreads so this has other fruits in it it has unusual colors not that berry red it was kind of middle of the pack we liked it um we liked all of them i mean it's strawberry jam jelly preserves it's delicious all right so there you have it the winner of our strawberry jam tasting is actually strawberry preserves by smuckers and that's 3.89 for an 18 ounce jar thanks for watching cook's country from america's test kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say hi now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later alligator

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 186,782

Keywords: cooks country, americas test kitchen, cooks illustrated, strawberry jam, strawberry preserves, taste test

Id: U9PQ95DeBoU

Length: 4min 40sec (280 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021