When I was at the store that first night, one of the things I picked up was a roasted chicken. The plan wasn’t to eat it immediately, but to replenish our chicken stock… and have some chicken meat available for other stuff.

This chicken was really well roasted, and I was able to pull all the meat off by hand. I got about a quart of meat and a bunch of skin and bones (I left some skin with the meat ’cause I like it).

When you make stock it’s really best to use uncooked bones – and you may be able to get those from the butcher at the supermarket – but skin, bones, cartilage from a cooked chicken make great stock, too. Usually you’ll add some sort of aromatics. The traditional French mirepoix is onions, carrots, and celery. If you were going for a Chinese stock, you might use ginger, garlic, and scallions. I had half an onion and some carrots, so I used those. Leaving the onion skin on gives the stock a nice golden color. Don’t bother to peel the carrots, but do cut the tops off as they can be bitter.

Throw everything in a slow cooker or pot, cover with cold water, bring it to a boil, then simmer it for days. Making stock is great if your attention is elsewhere because the longer it cooks the better it gets – just be sure to keep adding water if you need to. It also makes your whole place smell great so the chances of you forgetting altogether are low.

After two or three days (I’m actually not sure how long it was on for), I strained all the bits out and got two quarts of delicious, golden stock.