All it takes is the smell of sesame oil for my husband to come wandering into the kitchen. Even a small amount can fill up the whole room, piercing and immediately recognizable, yet the smell is a round, mellow one, like a warm, booming laugh. “Something smells good,” Andrew will inevitably say, perking up with Pavlovian interest. “When do we eat?”

When something can rouse an appetite so powerfully all on its own, it needs very little else to become a good meal, and gireumjang, a sandy textured dipping sauce made from nothing more than sesame oil, salt, and black pepper, is proof positive of this. Nutty and toasty, punched up from the salt and warm from the black pepper, gireumjang is typically served with thin slices of barbecued pork belly, or samgyeopsal, but my mother-in-law also favors serving it with strips of sirloin steak. The latter, smoky from a quick sear in a good cast-iron pan, is my favorite.