A COOK should always say yes when offered something that will “stink up your pot real good.”

It’s a lesson I learned earlier this month, when James Graham handed me a couple of pieces of seasoning meat from his truck, parked on a stretch of asphalt in Brooklyn.

Seasoning meat is really just the thick trimmings band-sawed from the top or bottom of a country ham. Some people call it sweet meat, others just call it smoked ham.

But in the backs of a handful of trucks that park in East New York, Canarsie and Bedford-Stuyvesant, it’s called seasoning meat and it will set you back about $4 a pound. You don’t need very much to make a batch of Hoppin’ John or some greens. Maybe a quarter-pound, especially if the meat is sharing the job with a ham hock or two.

“Put some of this in your pot and the neighbors will come fast, I promise you that,” said Mr. Graham, who works out of a truck parked near the intersection of Flatlands and Pennsylvania Avenues in Brooklyn.