Every once in a while over the course of our otherwise happy marriage, usually after a particularly complicated meal into which I’ve put a good deal of effort, my husband, who rarely enters a kitchen except to forage for snacks, will lean back in his chair and magnanimously declare: “This year, I think I’m going to learn how to make soup.” He means well, I know, but it’s pretty clear what he’s actually thinking:  Any idiot can cook, right?

Well, yes and no. It seems to me that, as with so many other endeavors, the most important step in any culinary undertaking is the first one. And, despite his many avowals, my husband has assiduously managed to avoid taking it. That is until this past week when, during a trip to visit family in South Florida, he made his declaration once again. This time after a wonderful dinner that my sister-in-law had painstakingly prepared. “You know, this year I think I’m going to…” he began, but before he could finish the well-worn sentence, I cut in, saying: “Great! We’ll do it tomorrow!”

The weather was unseasonably cool. The beach was out of the question. Our college-age niece was at the tail-end of her break, slightly bored and looking for something new to try. There happened to be a whole fresh chicken in the refrigerator, along with a couple of onions, carrots, and some celery. I think the idea came to all three of us at the same time: chicken soup! And so, after thumbing through a number of cookbooks, we found this terrific step-by-step recipe for making “Hearty Chicken Soup” from scratch, complete with some helpful illustrations (in the cookbook The Perfect Recipe by Pam Anderson).

A part of me would like to report that the dismantling of the chicken got the better of my husband. Or that he did a lousy job chopping all those vegetables, browning the chicken pieces, or keeping the pot on an even simmer. That he eventually threw down the knife and tore off his apron and cried: “How in the world do you do this night after night?”

But, in fact, with the good-natured help of my niece, the soup-making turned out to be pretty much a piece of cake. We added some chicken bouillon to enrich the sauce. We substituted barley for the noodles suggested in the above recipe. And we ended up serving the soup with a dollop of home-made pesto sauce that my sister-in-law had on hand. But honestly? It was absolutely delicious just as it was.

Lesson learned? Soup is a flexible and forgiving way to lure a novice into the kitchen and have him come out convinced that he has the goods to be the next Top Chef. Have your husband or teen-ager give it a try. Only this time, double the recipe and freeze the leftovers. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as home-made chicken soup, especially when someone else is stirring the pot.

Liza Bennett Gyllenhaal is a novelist who divides her time between New York City and The Berkshires. Read about her novel "Local Knowledge" at www.lizagyllenhaal.com.

Liza blogs about gardening and cooking and shares her photographs here at Kitchen Scoop.