Lily's Kitchen the Ultimate Dinner: Chicken review

The Chicken Stew with Quail Egg & Carrot and the Chicken Stew with Salmon & Green Beans reach our Outstanding band. The Chicken Stew with Duck & Apple and the Steak follow in Excellent, and the two plated chicken dishes sit in Good. The middle of the adult wet market occupies our Excellent band, so this is a shelf that holds its own and, at its best, gets out in front of the field. Chicken with Salmon finishes level with the plainer Chicken dish, its animal content split across four smaller entries while its analysis reads much the same. Protein is what every label here does well: the stews convert to between 76.0% and 78.3% of dry matter, and even the lightest plated dish reaches 61.1%. The estimated carbohydrate never climbs past 11.1%, where adult wet food usually runs at 15.8%.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (38%), Chicken Breast (17%), Diced Courgette (2%), Emmental Cheese (2%), Peaches (2%), Minerals, Mint (0.4%), Whole Fennel Seeds (0.2%), Algae.

The three plated dishes are the ones that look like dinner. Chicken pairs chicken at 38% with chicken breast at 17%. Steak puts beef steak at 55% on its own. Chicken with Salmon spreads its animal content over chicken at 32%, chicken breast at 10%, whole peeled shrimp at 8% and salmon fillet at 5%. Each is finished with a small amount of vegetable and fruit and a pinch of herb, and none of the three declares a starch source.

The stews are built the other way round: plain and concentrated. Chicken runs from 52% to 56%, chicken stock at 2% carries the sauce, and dried tapioca starch does the thickening. Tapioca is a straightforward starch drawn from the cassava root and brings little else with it, and that is just what a thickener should do in a recipe this meat led.

Sunflower oil and tuna oil appear on all three stews. Among dog food oils sunflower is one of the kinder ones, being low in saturated fat and carrying vitamin E. Tuna oil is there for its omega 3. It also means fish is present in every stew, including the two whose names mention no fish at all.

The garnishes are where the range earns its name. Peaches and Emmental cheese on the Chicken, pumpkin and savoy cabbage with a spoon of yoghurt on the Chicken with Salmon. Celeriac and tomato flakes on the Steak, apple or quail egg or green beans on the stews. None of these is why you would buy the food, since all sit at low single figures, but they do give a jaded eater something to notice.

Micronutrition comes from a mineral premix, not a long additive panel, with algae closing the three plated labels as a source of trace elements. Nothing questionable appears on the six labels. These are short lists of recognisable food, and the analysis matches what the names promise.

Chicken at 38% with chicken breast at 17% behind it, then courgette, Emmental cheese and peaches at 2% each. At 77 kcal per 100g it is among the lightest here, and it is the only dish whose meat is entirely chicken.

The 150g dishes are £28.33 a kilo. The stews come in an 85g size.

As a guide, on the 150g dishes a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at around £30.91 a day. That is roughly 1091 grams, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The stews are denser, working out at 785 to 875 grams a day on the same basis. Many households use this range as the special dinner, on top of the everyday ration.