Years Chef's Collection: King Prawn, Giant Squid & Chicken Paella review

Four of these trays reach our Outstanding band and the Shepherd's Pie sits below them in our Good band, which is a strong set of results in the strongest category we score. The typical fresh food already stands in that same Outstanding band, so four of the five are holding the line. The Shepherd's Pie is the tray sitting lower, reading Average for protein and processing and Poor for nutritional balance, and that follows an analysis its own ingredient list does not support. Every other tray reads Outstanding for protein and processing and for transparency, with the paella and the wild boar burger the strongest of the collection.

Ingredients, as declared: Skinless Chicken leg 25%, King Prawn 14%, Salmon 13%, Cauliflower Rice 11.5%,Giant Squid Tentacles 8%, Piquillo Peppers 2.5%, Red Pepper 7.5%, Desiccated Coconut 9.4%, Yuca Flour 3.8%, Spinach 2%, Herbs and botanicals 2.12% (Turmeric, Chamomile, Alfalfa, Nettle, Pink Himalyan Salt, Kelp, Dandelion, Chicory Root), Vitamins & Minerals 0.88%, Water 0.3%.

The construction is the story here. These are recipes in the ordinary kitchen sense, with named cuts weighed and cooked and put in a tray. Lamb shoulder and lamb heart, beef forequarter and beef lung, pork heart, wild boar shoulder, king prawn and giant squid tentacles all appear with their own percentage beside them. The organ meat is never hidden behind a euphemism. Very few labels in any format go this far.

Meat share is high across the board. The wagyu recipe declares 60% beef and then breaks that fraction into six named cuts, and the wild boar tray runs boar shoulder, pork heart and free range egg one after another. Where a starch is needed it tends to be a root or a flour, not a cereal, with parsnip, swede, sweet potato, butternut squash, yuca flour and tapioca starch doing most of that work. Tapioca is worth naming honestly: close to pure starch and not much besides, though it is used in small amounts here.

The nutrient tables are the second thing that sets these apart. Every tray prints a per kilo panel: calcium between 4003mg and 4497mg, phosphorus between 2172mg and 2604mg, with vitamin E, zinc, iron, copper and iodine behind them. Three of the five add taurine as well, running from 2095mg to 2490mg. Taurine is something most dogs make for themselves, so seeing it topped up and printed is a considered touch.

The vegetables have been chosen with care. Butternut squash, red pepper, kale, courgette, pumpkin, celeriac and spinach turn up across the five, and the herb and botanical blends name their contents in full. Turmeric, chamomile, alfalfa, nettle, kelp, dandelion and chicory root all appear by name inside the paella's 2.12% blend. Chicory earns its place in its own right, being a source of inulin the gut can use.

A couple of entries deserve a straight word. Pink Himalayan salt appears on three labels, and while salt is a necessary mineral it is usually present in the raw ingredients already, so it is there for taste as much as anything. Fromage frais brings dairy to the lasagne and beef gelatine sets the shepherd's pie, both small inclusions but both worth spotting on an exclusion plan.

The moisture figures confirm these are proper cooked dinners rather than dried ones, from 60% on the lasagne to about 70% on the wild boar burger, with the paella around 65%. Protein then converts to between 27.5% and 40.9% of dry matter across the four trays whose analyses read straight, with fat from 16.7% to 30.0%. That is a rich and meat led profile by any standard.

Skinless chicken leg at 25% with king prawn at 14%, salmon at 13% and giant squid tentacles at 8%, which is four animals in one tray and much the most adventurous label of the five. Cauliflower rice at 11.5%, desiccated coconut at 9.4% and yuca flour at 3.8% carry the carbohydrate, so despite the name there is no cereal in it at all. It sits in our Outstanding band with the best of the range, and its herb and botanical blend at 2.12% is the most detailed in the collection.

Years sell the Chef's Collection by the tray, with the on-page selector setting how many trays go into an order rather than choosing a pack size. The tray weight is not published, so there is no per kilo figure to give here.

For portions, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works through roughly 503 to 521 grams a day across the Wellington, the Lasagne and the Wild Boar Burger. Behind that sits the standard maintenance estimate of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75). The Shepherd's Pie publishes no energy figure at all, and the paella's sits oddly low against its own protein and fat declarations, so take the portion for those two from Years' own feeding guide instead.