Jessica's K9 Kitchen Jessica's Stew - Allergen Friendly review

This lands in our Excellent band. Fresh food keeps the toughest company we score, with the typical fresh recipe sitting in our Outstanding band, so a reading like this describes an honest kitchen recipe measured against an unusually strong field. What holds it just under that mark is the label, not the dinner. There is no printed vitamin and mineral panel, the vegetable share is described in general terms, and the calories are our estimate. The pillars tell the same story: protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Outstanding, with transparency Good and value Excellent. The analysis agrees: protein converts to 47.5% of dry matter and the carbohydrate estimate is only 20.0%.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh Meat/offal/bone (80/10/10) 60%, Fresh Veg 40%, Muscle Meat - Lamb (lean fore), Turkey leg, pork leg, Pork tongue, Pork heart. Offal - Pork kidney, Pork liver, Bone - Turkey finely ground

The 80/10/10 shorthand describes eight parts muscle meat to one part offal to one part edible bone, roughly the proportions of a whole prey animal. Here that ratio governs 60% of the recipe and fresh vegetables make up the remaining 40%, a larger plant share than most kitchens working this way use. That is part of why the carbohydrate estimate reaches 20.0% of dry matter.

The cuts are named one by one. Lamb lean fore leads the muscle meat, with turkey leg, pork leg, pork tongue and pork heart behind it. Tongue and heart are working muscles, not true offal. They are dense in protein and rich in what hard used tissue carries. A small kitchen buys that sort of thing and a factory rarely bothers.

The offal is pork kidney and pork liver. For sheer nutrition liver is hard to beat, carrying vitamin A, B12, copper and folate in a concentration no panel needs to match, and kidney brings its own set alongside. Finely ground turkey bone supplies the calcium, and at 2.41% of dry matter there is plenty of it in the mix.

There is no added vitamin and mineral panel on this label, so what balances the recipe is what it is made of: the organ meat, the ground bone and the produce. Plenty of small fresh kitchens work exactly this way and their dogs do well on it. Where this becomes the whole diet for years and not just an occasional bowl, put that question to the kitchen. They know their own recipe better than anyone.

Fresh food is mostly water by weight, 79.27% here, so the declared figures look small until the water comes out of the sum. Protein then converts to 47.5% of dry matter and fat to 23.2%, a properly meaty balance with a modest carbohydrate estimate behind it. Energy is not declared here, so the figure of roughly 89.8 kcal per 100g is our own estimate.

£10.00 a kilo. The 500g pack is the only single size the kitchen sells, with larger quantities going out as subscription boxes.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works through roughly 935 grams a day. That works from about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate) and an estimated 89.8 kcal per 100g. That comes to £9.35 a day. Because fresh food carries so much water, the daily weight runs far higher than a dried food's and the two do not compare gram for gram.