"A sunny day: ideal for a torée, this key event that celebrates the arrival of a new season, the season of golden colours and morning mists. We meet our friends at La Corbatière and find a good spot, among the wooded pastures, alone in the world, or nearly. Because on this beautiful Sunday, we meet other people walking with a sausage under their arm. Shortly, after finding some sticks, we gather round a crackling fire. Sausages rolled in a cabbage leaf and newspaper stew in their own juice. Local wine accompanies the traditional delicacy straight from the embers. As you taste the first bit, Autumn starts for real."
Céline
Info
A torée, sometimes called "feux de berger", is a Neuchâtel tradition that consists of preparing a big fire in a pasture and cooking sausages and potatoes in the embers. It’s traditionally done in the Autumn (after the flocks are brought in) but it can be organised at any time of year provided you find a good place.
Good to know
Traditionally, the sausage was wrapped in a few cabbage leaves then in damp newspaper. The fire was lit early in the morning so, by 10 o’clock, it would only be a heap of embers. The sausages and potatoes were buried in these embers without any other protection. The embers were then covered with fresh pine branches which produced a column of white, sweet-smelling smoke.
Tourisme neuchâtelois
Hôtel des Postes
2001 Neuchâtel
T. +41 (0) 32 889 68 90
