The base to every soup is stock. There are two basic ways to make stock: One is to boil a carcass, as in your rotisserie chicken carcass, and two is to start with raw chicken.
It's does not have to complicated. All you do is boil whichever you have in water and add vegetables. You can add onions, carrots, celery, peppers, to add flavor. You also add salt and pepper, bay leaves, whatever spices you like--I sometimes will add cumin and green chili powder if I know I am making a tortilla soup or a chili with the stock later.
You can buy beef bones at the supermarket specifically for making stock.
For vegetable stock, you just boil whatever flavorful veggies you want, usually onions, onion family veggies, peppers, carrots and celery and the like, to make your vegetable stock. If you add potatoes, they will make your stock a little bit cloudy.
There are three flavor bases for most stocks, but none are set in stone: Mirepoix, which is two parts chopped onions, to one part chopped celery, and one part chopped carrots. There is also Cajun Mirepoix or Holy Trinity, which is one part bell peppers, in place of the carrots above. Then there is Sofrito, which is peppers, (jalapenos or bell) tomatoes, garlic and onion and cilantro.
You can store stock in your freezer for months, or in your refrigerator for a week or two.
If you boil a chicken to make stock and then soup, you may have enough stock to set aside for your next batch of soup. Many times when I am dishing up soup, I keep it pretty heavy with the vegetables, meat and noodles, and save the soup, the stock or broth part, for the next batch. (Clearly mark them in your freezer, in case someone grabs soup from the freezer to take for their lunch or dinner to work.)
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