Servings: 6 cups

6 packages of chicken backs, necks or whatever from your local butcher 6 packages of chicken backs, necks or whatever from your local butcher
½ yellow onion not chopped at all ½ yellow onion not chopped at all
1 medium carrot chopped roughly 1 medium carrot chopped roughly
3 flat leaf parsley sprigs 3 flat leaf parsley sprigs
3 peppercorns (optional) 3 peppercorns (optional)
2 whole cloves (optional) 2 whole cloves (optional)

Defrost the chicken parts. This can be done in the fridge if you are super worried about disease, on the counter if you are normal or in water if you are in a hurry.
Optionally chop up the chicken parts. This will make the stock more intense for any amount of time you have it on the stove. But it is messy and requires a cleaver. Do not ruin a good knife doing this.
Put the chicken and all the ingredients in a huge pot and add cold water until you have covered everything by about 1".
Put said huge pot on the stove over low heat and leave it uncovered for 4 hours. If you are in a rush, you could use medium heat and get a reasonable result faster, in particular if you chopped up the bones.
To extract the stock, I usually just use a big ladle and carefully transfer it one scoop at a time to a medium pot, trying hard to not get any of the solids. Alternatively, you could carefully pour it through a fine strainer but this can get messy.
Ideally let the stock cool down for an hour, during which the fat from the chicken will rise to the top. Use that ladle to carefully skim the fat off.
Boom!

A good stock has two attributes: flavor and body. The flavor develops pretty quickly during the simmer. And for some recipes - like risotto - that is all you really need. The body comes from gelatin in the bones which takes much longer to extract. Chopping the bones helps both but really helps with the gelatin. Sauces and soups really benefit from this.  A good stock has two attributes: flavor and body. The flavor develops pretty quickly during the simmer. And for some recipes - like risotto - that is all you really need. The body comes from gelatin in the bones which takes much longer to extract. Chopping the bones helps both but really helps with the gelatin. Sauces and soups really benefit from this.