The giant raffle wheel stood before a crowd buzzing with anticipation. A sweepstakes of sorts was about to get underway.

At stake: Steak. And pork tenderloin. And sausage. And almost every other cut of meat imaginable.

Nearly 260 people sat shoulder-to-shoulder on a recent Saturday night at long tables inside V.F.W. Post 1419 in Hamburg, N.Y., a Buffalo suburb. They drank cheap beer from plastic cups, snacked on munchies and fingered the stacks of $1 bills they had brought to gamble. Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” blared over the speakers.

Hovering nearby were dozens of children in Hamburg Hawks hockey jerseys ready to take their money.

“It’s a meat raffle,” said Katie Bratek, who wore a red, white and blue T-shirt that read “Meat Raffle Queen.” She had wheeled out a cart of strip steaks, shrimp and ribs that were up for grabs. “You can get a rack of ribs for $2. It’s a deal, and who doesn’t love a deal?”

Meat raffles, unknown in most of the United States, are as embedded as snow and ice in the fabric of communities of the Great Lakes and Midwest, where they are formidable fund-raising tools for charities and, increasingly, youth sports organizations.