Zebra cookware, the gladiator of the camp kitchen

Choosing the perfect expedition cookware is vital for our guides sanity and to ensure a highly functional backcountry kitchen. That’s why we at Coral Sea Kayaking are big supporters of the Zebra brand pot sets. Zebra brand is a Thai company that make the classic pots you see on the streets of Thailand but this versatile cookware is not only a master at whipping up a Pad Thai it also serves as the connoisseurs choice for expedition cookware. Zebra is slightly rivalled by the Seagull brand but any expedition kayak guide with an eye for detail notices Zebra’s superiority in the arena of camp cookery. These pots are the Toyota Landcruiser of cookware, built for practicality, they are light weight, robust and pack down inside one another, mmmm a babushka cookset with no annoying handles or bits sticking out making it easy to pack in a kayak or drybag plus they are large enough to cook a one pot meal for a dozen people in!! They have been the gold standard expedition pot set since the glory days of adventure tourism, the 80’s when a roughened, tanned guide decked out in flouro trimmed Bolle’s, happy pants and a mullet returned from South East Asia holding a Zebra mega pot above his head like the America’s cup. And so began the halcyon days of one pot meals, that path of least resistance that churned out riverside risotto’s, pesto pasta’s on island beaches and bubbling lental soup broths whilst shivering under a tarp in the mountains.

For 20 years Dave Tofler has been paddling along Hinchinbrook Island with a Zebra pot set in the back of his kayak, respecting it like the crown jewels, patiently cleaning it back to showroom shine after every trip and so the Zebra pot set has lived on, defying the rigours of expedition sea travel and dominating the coliseum that is the camp kitchen, it is the gladiator of cookware. The Coral Sea Kayaking Zebra pot set is a silver shining legacy of a bygone era before trashy Trangia and before Teflon gave you cancer. The only missing element to the set is one lid!! ;) lost in the shallows of Wheeler island by a certain senior guide who will remain anonymous, let’s just say that the commodore of the fleet wasn’t too happy when he found out!, you could say it put a crinkle in his Hawaiian shirt and made the poodles cry. Some say he never recovered and that you often see him standing on the beach at Wheeler island gazing out to sea hoping that Davy Jones will deliver back his beloved Zebra Lid. But alas it has never returned from its watery grave but you can be assured that the remainder of this treasured pot set will be along on every ride, firmly stowed away in the kayak as it does another lap along Hinchinbrook island.