“No soup for you!”
It’s a line that actor Larry Thomas has uttered thousands of times — most famously, of course, during the Seinfeld episode in which he guest starred as the Soup Nazi. But also to the countless fans who recognize him on the street, and for the hundreds of Cameo requests he’s completed. “They’d probably demand a refund if I didn’t say it,” he jokes.
But despite the fact that he’s been mock-denying people a bowl of soup for more than 25 years, Thomas himself is actually a pretty generous guy — especially when it comes to the subject of soup. To prove it, he was more than happy to provide us with his favorite fall soups. He even went a step further and shared a few recipes from his memoir/cookbook, Confessions of a Soup Nazi: An Adventure in Acting and Cooking.
While he might be known for saying “No soup for you,” for once, Thomas would instead like to say, “Soup for you” — even if it definitely isn’t as catchy.
First thing first: Do you know how to make your own soup?
Oh yeah. I grew up cooking. My dad was a cook. He took off when I was a little kid, but he inspired me to be a good cook. My mom had to be a single working businesswoman and never really learned to cook; so I just grew up cooking and had a knack for it. And since I’d played the Soup Nazi, I had friends telling me I should write a cookbook. I never really wrote anything down or measured anything, I just cooked stuff. But finally, they talked me into it, and I wrote a book about my life as an actor, which was also a cookbook and a number of the recipes are for soups. My favorite review I ever saw for the book is, “The stories are so-so, but the recipes are great.”
