I've been feeling depressed lately so I decided it was time to drown the noise in an arduous cooking project.

I've made many wonderful chilis in my time but I always used store-bought stocks/broths when doing so, and I always thought it would be fun to make a homemade stock, so that's what I'll be doing today

Here we have a whole chicken, ham hocks, half an onion, carrots and celery, and some smash garlic that are hiding under the other ingredients. Normally when I make chicken stock I add whole allspice and other warming ingredients (I recently tried a cinnamon stick and that was wonderful) but I don't think I want those flavors in this chili. So instead I'm using whole peppercorns and sichuan peppercorns. We'll see how it turns out!

I've never done this with ham hocks before but I've used them in a number of red bean recipes and I really like the subtle flavor they add, and they're cheap

I have one more thing I'm preparing today that I will use some of the stock for, so you can look forward to that ​​