How to make ice-cream from your barbecue and Heston Blumenthal's other top barbie tips

Looking to try something different on your barbecue?

"Go to the pet shop," says Heston Blumenthal.

Don't worry, the acclaimed British chef isn't suggesting you put a hamster or kitty on the grill. He wants you to buy hay as a cooking aid for your barbie.

His suggestion? Take fish ("get yellowtail, bass groper or something like that"), cure it in salt, lime, coriander and chilli; then wrap the fish in muslin, cover with hay (and then more hay) and keep the fish secured between two grills.

"You just hold it over the fire and the fire will go 'whoosh!'" he says. While this might seem like a technique only firefighters would be comfortable with, the chef says it's less intense than it actually sounds. "[The fire] goes up and within one minute, it's gone. Brush the hay off, take the muslin and you've got this beautifully smoked fish."

Blumental is currently in Australia to celebrate both the first-year anniversary of his Melbourne restaurant Dinner By Heston and launch his Everdure by Heston barbecue range - and this is not the only inventive suggestion he has for your barbie.

"You can make rice pudding - you just put it in sausage casing," he says. "That's the original rice pudding recipe, [it] was basically in an intestine." (For a vegetarian-friendly version, he recommends cooking the rice pudding in some nice brioche "like a hot dog - that would be interesting".)

It's not surprising that Blumenthal - who has produced everything from lickable wallpaper to snail porridge - would come up with inventive ways to use a barbecue. Why not try it to cook toffee apples, risotto or even ice-cream?

It helps to have a barbecue with tiers, but the chef suggests putting a tray of milk underneath a roasting ingredient. "It will drip into the milk, and you can make a custard or a caramel sauce," says Blumenthal. "Or if you've finished dripping, put your tray of milk in there and it will lightly smoke it. And then you can keep it to make ice cream." (Given the legendary egg and bacon flavour that has appeared on the menu at his restaurant, The Fat Duck, it's fitting that he'd suggest people use the barbie to create a savoury dessert.)

There are also more straightforward tricks you can try (like cooking en papillote, "where you just put stuff in tin foil") and Blumenthal admits that he prefers taking a more casual approach at home, rather than aiming for high-concept food.

"I love hamburgers, for example," he says. And for him, the key to making a good burger is to incorporate a milk-based brioche bun ("so it's lighter"), "gherkins and not cornichons", ketchup and mayonnaise ("and not Dijon mustard for me"), sliced tomatoes, cheese, iceberg lettuce and sliced onions that have been soaked in water for 20 minutes. ("It just takes out the bitter compounds - you can blanch for 10 seconds, but it's quite a good technique.")

"Flip the burger – flip flip flip," he adds. "Toast the bun, and that's it."

He also prefers fish, prawns, "a nice bit of steak" and sausages.

The trick to replicating his style of barbecuing at home is surprisingly simple.

"I think people should just do one thing, or two things, and just focus on the quality of the product."

And you should definitely not prick sausages when you cook them on the barbecue.

"It's better for them to start off slow and if you prick the sausages, what will happen, is the juices come out [and dries them out]," he says.

And if you're out of ideas for what to cook for a vegetarian at a barbecue, Blumenthal has plenty of inspiration for you.

Try pickled vegetables, a wedge of semi-fermented cabbage straight on the grill, pre-braised fennel, scored eggplant basted with miso (that you garnish with pickled ginger), a galette of potatoes with onions spit-roasting above them, or that pet-shop-sourced hay trick, but with pre-cooked turnip, onion or carrots instead of fish.

"There's quite a lot you can do."