Lily's Kitchen Trays Adult: Wild Campfire Stew review

Three of these trays settle in our Excellent band, exactly where the middle of the adult wet market settles. The Lamb Hotpot and the Great British Breakfast go a step better again in our Outstanding band. Lamb Hotpot is the strongest of them. Protein and processing reads Outstanding, and so do nutritional balance and transparency. Great British Breakfast is close behind it, and the route is a different one. Ham and whole egg powder do more of the work than in the other trays, and haricot beans and potatoes take the plant share a little further. It is still a well declared recipe with 60% of the tray coming from named animals, which is more than most wet food manages.

Ingredients, as declared: Venison (40%), Pheasant (15%), Salmon (10%), Potatoes, Butternut Squash, Green Beans, Apples, Minerals, Hemp Oil, Goldenrod, Nettles, Aniseed, Rosehips, Marigold Flowers, Cleavers, Chickweed, Alfalfa, Milk Thistle, Dandelion Root, Burdock Root, Celery Seeds.

Four of the five trays share their recipes with the brand's tins, so the format is what changes here and not the food. Cottage Pie, Lamb Hotpot, Fishy Fish Pie and Wild Campfire Stew each declare the same percentages you would read on the tin. The tray is a straight convenience choice.

Great British Breakfast is the recipe unique to the trays, and it is unusual in a good way. Venison at 40% with ham at 20% is not a pairing you meet often, and whole egg powder at 1% adds a complete protein with a little fat. Haricot beans at 4% sit alongside potatoes at 5%, giving it a slightly fuller plant list than its neighbours. The estimated carbohydrate still lands at 12.3% of dry matter, under the 15.8% that adult wet food usually runs at.

Fishy Fish Pie is worth singling out for its labelling. Where most makers would print one combined fish percentage, this tray breaks its 60% down: turkey at 30%, then herring and salmon at 15% apiece. That kind of detail is rare, and it is exactly what lets a careful owner judge a recipe instead of trusting it.

The plant side stays modest across the shelf: potatoes at 3% to 5%, squash, carrots, apples, green beans and blueberries. Potatoes are essentially starch and useful mainly as a carrier. How much of it each recipe uses is why the carbohydrate estimates spread from 8.2% of dry matter on Fishy Fish Pie up to 27.8% on Cottage Pie.

Added fat comes from flaxseed on Cottage Pie and Lamb Hotpot and from hemp oil on the two recipes carrying fish, both plant sources of omega 3. Micronutrition is declared as vitamins and chelated minerals on Cottage Pie and Fishy Fish Pie, and simply as minerals on Great British Breakfast and Wild Campfire Stew. The Lamb Hotpot list carries no mineral entry at all. That looks like a gap on the label and not in the recipe.

Three animals here, venison at 40%, pheasant at 15% and salmon at 10%, the widest spread in the range and the only tray carrying a game bird. Hemp oil, butternut squash and green beans fill it out.

Every tray is £11.33 a kilo, in a single 150g size.

As a guide, work from about 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That is roughly 613 to 808 grams a day, or between £6.95 and £9.15 depending on the recipe.