Hands down the best part of being stuck at home with the kids for months has been their interest in cooking.

E has really found her happy place as the baker of the family. Muffins, cookies, cakes, she has mastered the basics of creaming butter and sugar, sifting dry ingredients, and folding in fresh berries, chopped nuts or chocolate chips. She was my right hand as we tackled Christmas cookie baking.

The boys have both conquered enough to earn most of their Boy Scout cooking badges and along the way discovered things that they enjoyed making (pizza, tacos, soup) and things that I can now say, “make (spaghetti, chicken pot, hamburgers) for dinner while I finish up working.”

I’ve been coasting along thinking that this was pretty much the best thing since sliced bread, or at least the pizza dough that G likes to make from scratch, when A proposed a new challenge.

“Mom, can we make beef Wellington for Christmas?”

As a family, we have spent a pretty decent amount of time watching “The Great British Baking Show” over the last few months, and “meat pies” were something that routinely attracted the interest of the boys, particularly when they put game into them, but this was not something I’d ever even considered making before.

Up to this point, the recipes I’d tried with them had mostly been tried and true recipes that I could make in my sleep, or slight variations on them. I was a little bit leery of taking on an entirely new dish and a new technique, particularly when one of the ingredients costs as much as the budget of a small country.

There was really no way around the 3 pounds of beef tenderloin we were going to need for the main dish. As much as I don’t mind paying for a nice cut of meat, and as much as I enjoy eating a nicely prepared steak, I was more than a little nervous about shelling out a pretty hefty chunk of the grocery budget for what was essentially going to be an experiment. I tried to shop around, but I knew if I waited too long to find it on sale, he’d probably lose his enthusiasm for the project.

A and I spent a few days looking up recipes and finally settled on one that seemed pretty straightforward, from The New York Times. While we were doing our research, I convinced him that the amount of work that was going to be needed to assemble this masterpiece was better suited to one of our lazy vacation days, rather than Christmas Day, when at least one of us would be functioning on less than a good night’s sleep.

So, after our infatuation with the Christmas ham had worn off and we were ready for a change of pace from ham leftovers, it seemed like the perfect time to change things up with some beef. I was determined to let him carry on with this and only add support as needed. He was determined to test my resolve and my patience.

As he stood in front of the open refrigerator for several minutes, apparently willing the ingredients to magically fly out of it, I gritted my teeth and took a few deep breaths. Then, after he’d read the entire recipe about four times, and I made him lay out every single utensil and dish he would need, I discovered that I did not have the cooking sherry that I thought I did, instead I had some old Marsala wine.

Determined to do this right, I told him not to touch anything and I would be right back. I zoomed out to the store to quickly grab some sherry. When I got back home, I walked into the house to the pleasant smell of mushrooms and shallots cooking in bacon grease.

I was positively stunned to find out that he’d gone against my specific instructions and carefully executed steps 1 through 3 perfectly. As I scraped the mushroom mixture around in the pan, I was shocked to see how perfectly he’d cooked it and how it was precisely ready for the sherry, garlic and thyme to be added to it. As much as I wanted to, I was completely unable to find fault.

G and the Wonderful Husband returned from their morning adventure in the woods and their mouths started watering as soon as they walked into the kitchen.

The next parts were just layering prosciutto and the mushrooms and then wrapping the tenderloin up neatly to chill for a few hours. While we took shortcuts and used prepared puff pastry (my enthusiasm for experimentation has its limits), all in all the whole project came together beautifully. I will also give A 99% of the credit for making it. I mean running to the store for sherry was a critical step and had to count for something.

As he sliced through the golden crust and the steam escaped, carrying with it the intoxicating scent of roast beef, shallots, garlic and mushrooms, we couldn’t wait to dig in. Well, with the exception of E, who is leaning toward being a vegetarian this week and who was happy to dig into the twice baked potatoes that we’d whipped up to go with our fancy main course. That was fine with us because it meant that we had an extra portion to share.

Being able to turn my teenager into a kitchen wizard who can follow a recipe, even when he can’t find the ingredients in the fridge, feels like a major win and a good reminder that something really awesome has come out of all of this time stuck at home. Last year, he would have been hard-pressed to heat up a hot dog or cook a can of soup himself. Now I’m pretty confident I can just about turn over all the cooking duties to him and not only will we not die of food poisoning, but we might also eat pretty well.

Now I just need one of my kids to become as much of an exercise enthusiast as we’ve become foodies.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.