— Robert Kerr

So yes, Pho is definitely a complex soup. Um, and the reason it has so many different ingredients and in that is because that's kind of what makes it so complex different, um, seasonings like star anise and cinnamon that are not commonly used in soups, um, are really a shining example on that one. Um, adding different acids like the sweetness of an orange, but a little bit of a bitterness of the lemon adds a different kind of complexity to those dishes as well. Now when you're making a vegetable stock, basically you kind of start out with a lot of different ingredients to be able to get that dynamic stock at the same time. So could you use less ingredients? Absolutely. Uh, would it taste as big as the one that you made from Rouxbe? Maybe not. But that being said, there's a huge variety of different f recipes out there and I definitely encourage you to just do a simple Google search to be able to find some other versions of a vegan fub because there are lots of them. The majority of the ingredients, I would say are typically placed in the top of them that need a little bit more accoutrement to it. Um, but everything else as far as the number of ingredients are most likely going to be fine in the stock itself, which really adds to be able to make that a very complex dish. So yeah, you absolutely can, uh, narrow down your list of ingredients, probably down to 10 or 12 on ingredients. Um, but just be aware that some of the ingredients, um, you know, that you might take out of there might add a dynamic, uh, flavor profile that might be missing if you do take that out.