In last week's episode of “As the Matzo Ball Turns,” we discussed giving a chicken a good, long soak in a hot bath until it was poached to perfection.

This process yields moist, tender chicken meat, a pile of skin and bones, and a pot of barely flavored water in which the chicken was cooked.

If you return the skin and bones to the pot, boil them – uncovered - for an hour or so, strain away the solids, chill the liquid then remove the fat that rises to the top, what will be left is a low-fat, mildly flavored, unseasoned chicken stock that can be stored in your freezer for a myriad of later uses.

All that any stock requires is bones and water. In fact, I don’t season the stock at all before I freeze it. I wait till later, when I’m using it in other recipes, combining it with other ingredients, to determine what seasoning I’ll need.

If you need stock but you don’t happen to have any bones lying around, another great place to start is a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store. We all buy them. They are delicious. And if you want to squeeze all the value out of them simply throw the leftover skin and bones into a pot, add enough water to cover the carcass by about 1 inch, and set it to boil for an hour. After straining, chilling and removing the fat, you’ll end up with a browner chicken stock, one that has a bit more flavor than one you would make if you began with raw or poached bones.

A word of caution though: Don’t try this with one of those flavored birds, one that has been injected with bourbon or barbecue. Just a plain, old roasted bird will give you the best result.

If you have no time on the day you bought the rotisserie chicken, which may in fact be why you bought it in the first place, just pack the skin and bones into a freezer bag and make the stock later.

Once you have a good stock, turning it into a rich, soulful broth, the hallmark of any respectable matzo ball soup, requires adding vegetables.

When I began my most recent matzo ball soup serial, I started with the bones and skin from two or three rotisserie chickens that I had frozen previously.

I loaded them, still frozen, into a big pot and added a large, red onion that I had chopped into about eight pieces but that I hadn’t bothered to peel. I threw in two or three large celery stalks, including the leaves, which I had washed and snapped into a couple of pieces. I scrubbed a couple of carrots, unpeeled, chopped them into 2- or 3-inches pieces each and tossed them in with a handful of parsley stems that I had saved for just this occasion. Feel free to improvise. You could add leeks or parsnips, whatever you have.

Next, I filled the pot with liquid — I used about half water and half light chicken stock from my freezer. If you don’t have any in your freezer, feel free to use a box from the grocery store. Just be sure to get a low-sodium version. The liquid should cover the bones and vegetables by about 1 inch. You also can use all water. No sin there.

Bring it to a boil with the cover on. When it’s at a full boil, take off the cover and turn down the heat so the mixture remains at a good simmer, but not a crazy, spattering boil.

That’s it. Let it go for an hour or two. Watch a movie. Read a book. When you feel like you want to move on, turn off the heat and let the bones and vegetables steep in the cooling broth for about 30 minutes. At this point, I like to strain the broth into a large container with a tight-fitting lid, then refrigerate the stock overnight, allowing the fat to rise to the top for easy removal the next morning. Be sure to save the fat. You can freeze that, too, and you’re going need it for your matzo balls. As for the broth, you can use it that day or you can freeze it for a future soup.

There’s nothing wrong with buying chicken stock in a box. I do it all the time and I use it in all kinds of recipes. But if you make soup with that alone, your guests won’t be hungry any more but they may not come back for seconds.

If you want your loved ones to weep with joy after eating a bowl of your soup, if you want your soup to feed their souls as well as their stomachs, you’ve got to make your own broth.

Enjoy!

Jill Blanchette is the multiplatform production manager at The Day. Share comments and recipes with her at j.blanchette@theday.com.