If the aisles of grocery stores like Billa or Hit can tell us anything about Bulgarian's preference for cooking oil they surely tell us this: sunflower oil, sunflower oil, sunflower oil.  I guess a train ride across the country in June might also tell you this given the fields upon fields of sunflowers between Sofia and Burgas.

Interestingly, I don't think that I'd ever cooked with sunflower oil before moving to Bulgaria. Canola oil, peanut oil and olive oil, of course, I'd cooked with these. But sunflower oil was new to me.

Looking at sunflower oil it reminded me of canola in color and smell. Even before I'd looked up sunflower oil on the internet, I felt pretty confident that I could sub sunflower oil into any dishes that I would normally use canola oil for and be a happy camper. Then I looked it up just to double check. Yep, these two oils are similar in their uses, mild flavor and smoking point.

In other words, you can bake things like muffins and quick bread with sunflower oil. You can whip a dressing with this oil easy-peasy. Stir-fried veggies taste great cooked in sunflower oil and if you were actually going to deep fry something this oil would be just fine for that as well.  Pretty great huna?

I am happy to use sunflower oil. I really can't taste any difference between this oil and the canola I grew up with. The only thing I am stumped by is which brand to buy at the grocery store. They all basically look the same and the price usually only varies by pennies. So I do employ one of two tried and true methods whenever I am having a problem making up my mind in Bulgaria.

I look around to see which brand other Bulgarians are buying and I buy what they buy. <em>Or</em> I buy which ever item I think is the prettiest.

I mean if you like the sunflower oil that you produce enough to put good-looking sunflowers on the label, this is definitely the bottle I should be buying.  For the record, I do realize how ridiculous this sounds but really if I didn't have some hard and fast rules I'd never get out of a store like Billa or Hit. I applied the same rules two weeks ago when I bought the a jar of lutinitsa with Bulgarian girls in national costumes holding hands and dancing. And just so you know, pretty tasty.

How do you decide which brands to buy?