Take one large, heavy, lidded pan; mine is a six-quart enamelled cast-iron Copco pan with 20 years' good cooking already logged, and I live in terror that yuppie burglars will break into my house some night and steal it. Put into it one fat old chicken. If you live in a part of the world where there are no fat old chickens for sale, put in two scrawny young chickens and a stick of butter.

Put the pan in a cold oven, turn the temperature to 325 degrees F. and wait patiently, doing nothing whatsoever to the chicken, for about four hours, till it's dark golden.

Take the pot out of the oven and let it cool to room temperature. Strip the meat off the bones. Cover everything, meat and bones, with about a gallon of water at room temperature. Add a raw onion, peeled and quartered, a bay leaf, a bunch of parsley tied together with string, and a small bunch of thyme similarly tied or a teaball with dried thyme leaves in it. Bring the water up to a simmer and let it just simmer (make a mirror, as the French say) for ten minutes. Turn it off and return it to room temperature again.

Take the meat out. It is not as good as it was before the wee simmer, but perfectly satisfactory for chicken salad or on waffles with creamed chicken or whatever. Waste not want not.

Add another quart of water, bring the broth back up to a simmer and simmer it for twenty minutes. Strain out the bones and vegetables. You should have about four quarts.

* Rich homemade chicken broth - Surely people who make use of bouillon cubes have no idea how easy home-made broth can be. This is not a traditional method, but it produces good results.

* I've never had good luck freezing broth (it starts to taste thinnish), so this is as much as I ever make at once. I keep it in the refrigerator in quart Mason canning jars. I've read that you should simmer saved broth for twenty minutes every four or five days, but it never lasts that long in my house, so I can't comment.

* I use a cup wherever a recipe calls for a cup of chicken broth. And then, after it's been around for a day or two, somebody suggests we really haven't had chicken soup with rice for a long, long time... or matzoh dumplings... or tortellini in brodo... and then it's all gone.