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The very first thing to bear in mind when cooking meat on a barbecue is that it's a lot more difficult to tell when it's ready to eat. Having the coals too hot can result in the outside of the meat becoming very blackened very quickly, and there's nothing worse than biting into a chicken leg to discover that it's not cooked next to the bone.

This is also very dangerous. Please ensure that all meat is cooked through fully before you eat it. With pork and chicken, cook it in an oven first - so that the juices run clear when it's pierced with a skewer - and finish them off on the grill. Make sure that flames don't come off the coals as fat drips onto them - have a small watering can handy to douse them and cool the coals.

Having said that, the barbecue is a perfect way to get a really unique taste out of various different types of meat. Most of us are used to pork chops, chicken, sausages and burgers but you can experiment with steak, venison, pork fillets, ostrich, racks of ribs... the list goes on.

If you're fed up of the normal barbecue sauce (everyone has their own favourite but we swear by a mixture of cider vinegar, orange juice, soy sauce, tomato ketchup, demerera sugar, a teaspoon of mustard and some hot pepper sauce) try using one of the jerk seasoning rubs available from most supermarkets. Jerk sauce is a really peppery and delicious mix flavoured with cloves, allspice and thyme from the West Indies and goes deliciously well on barbecued chicken and pork. Failing that, mix a couple of tablespoons of tandoori masala with some chilli powder, a little chick pea or gram flour and a tub of plain yoghurt and apply this to chicken prior to grilling it.

Instead of normal sausages, try grilling strips of chorizo sausage - this is slightly chewier but really strongly flavoured and goes deliciously with salads. You can make your own beefburgers rather than relying on frozen or butcher-made varieties by taking lean steak mince and mixing in beaten egg, a few breadcrumbs (not too many, a couple of tablespoons or so, otherwise the meat will go very spongy), a finely-chopped onion, some garlic and parsley and maybe a little Thai red or green curry paste for a bit of extra "oomph".

A healthy and delicious marinade for chicken breast fillets or turkey steaks is made with buttermilk, chopped fresh ginger, chilli, garlic and coriander - cover the meat with this, chill for a couple of hours, cook for 25 mins in the oven then grill.