Fennel come with phoron I have removed the phorons. Cut it like celery you are going t chop that off, I have washed the outside of the fennel and now I'm going to cut the fennel in half. As you can see it has almost like a onion like interior. If you chop it in half then it can sit on the table just like so and you can slice it thinly. Again you are going to want to cut this up a little bit more in your soup. Cause you don't want enormous pieces on your spoon. So chop it up, make sure all the pieces are relatively uniform. There you are ready to go.