In the eight years since Hooni Kim met the farmer in South Korea who supplies his New York restaurants with fermented sauces, or jangs, the man has grown into something of a mentor to the chef, instructing him in the careful and quite ancient art of coaxing deeply funky, savory flavors from simple soybeans.

And it’s a lesson of significance, because those jangs aren’t mere condiments; they are the flavorful undercurrent of just about every aspect of Korean cooking.

At the farm, which Kim visits several times a year to return with supplies to New York, he helps make the jangs, which are fermented and aged in porous clay pots to foster beneficial bacteria that not only create deep flavor, but also are prized for probiotics central to the Korean diet.

The challenge of cooking with jangs—the three core are doenjang, ganjang and gochujang—is twofold:

They contain a tremendous amount of salt, which acts as a preservative, and they are particularly pungent. So, used incorrectly, they overwhelm other ingredients.

In some ways, the approach is the opposite of Western cooking, which generally tries to draw out flavors from more subtle ingredients. Instead, jangs are tamed by balancing them with a combination of bold and bland ingredients, Kim says. That’s why Korean stews are made with water instead of broth, and many include tofu to absorb stronger flavors. Other dishes include both sugar and fruits such as Asian pear to offset the salt. And the table always is set with several banchan, or side dishes. These could include briny pickles and funky fermented kimchi on one end of the flavor spectrum, and lightly seasoned spinach and plain white rice on the other.

Particularly bold recipes might even contain all three jangs, as with yangneom galbi, or sweet-savory marinated short ribs, one of the best known examples of Korean barbecue. It’s managed by pairing the jangs with multiple sweet ingredients, as well as serving the meat with lettuce or cabbage, the fresh crunch of which lightens and brightens all the richness.

In his version, Kim calls for marinating thinly sliced beef ribs in a puree of sake, Asian pear, garlic, ginger, the sweet rice wine mirin, white sugar and ganjang, or soy sauce. The meat is tenderized by the acidity in the sake and the pear, which is more crisp, tart and naturally sweet than most Western pears. In fact, if Asian pears aren’t available, Kim recommends substituting a green apple for the extra tartness.

Once grilled, the meat gets tucked into lettuce leaves with a sauce called ssamjang, which prominently features the other two jangs— doenjang, a soybean paste akin to Japanese miso, and gochujang, a fermented chili paste. His take on ssamjang—which translates to “wrap sauce”— includes nontraditional walnuts, which lend texture, but also bitterness that helps balance the saltiness of the jangs.

We loved the balance of sweet, salty and umami in these ribs, as well as the ease of preparation. The sugar in the marinade allowed us to get a nice char on the thin slices of meat without overcooking, leaving us with crispy bits and tender meat that retained a satisfying chew.

The stir-together ssamjang includes both toasted walnuts and sesame seeds for additional texture and flavor, and we paired our galbi with a banchan of sesame-soy spinach.

But Kim notes that galbi are best enjoyed by adding different kinds of banchan to the wraps, experimenting with combinations that always end up delicious. “There’s no rules. Just enjoy,” he says. “And share.”