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Which should you pick? That depends on how you like to eat them!

Not all tomatoes are created equal. If you've ever bitten into a bland, mealy tomato in the dead of winter, you know what it's like to be simultaneously disappointed and painfully reminded that you're not yet in the summer's growing season. But come September, a lightly salted slab of in-season tomato can be borderline mind-bending. It's that good.

No, you don't have to learn how to grow tomatoes and you don't have to forego them the majority of the year. Visit your local grocery store: There are so many different types of tomatoes to try! Globe tomatoes are one of the most popular type of tomatoes—best for slicing and layering on top of sandwiches. Smaller varieties, like cherry and grape tomatoes, are good for snacking or eating halved in the best salad ever. Plum tomatoes, also known as Roma tomatoes, are the secret ingredient to culinary inventions like canned tomatoes and tomato paste. Sure, these store-bought tomatoes may not be of the same caliber as a seasonal heirloom tomato, but they are nevertheless reliable gems of sweet-tart brightness during a time typically marked by winter root vegetables. Here are the most popular types of tomatoes where most can be found at the grocery store—or your local farmers' market, if timing happens to be on your side.

These are medium to extra-large, round juicy tomatoes, which sit perfectly on a sandwich when sliced. This is the type you want for your topping on burgers and sandwiches. They're ideal for being eaten fresh, so hold out for in-season summer consumption, when they're bursting with flavor and shine in dishes like Ree Drummond's caprese salad—or take it one step further and try out her recipe for caprese French bread pizzas.

Ideal for snacking whole, halved, or threaded onto skewers, flavorful cherry tomatoes are thankfully available year-round—unlike most tomatoes, which are at their best in-season in the summer. These bite-sized tomatoes are also great roasted or sautéed until their skins burst, which concentrates their sweet-tart flavor and makes for a delicious accompaniment to chicken and fish. (Ree likes to serve hers on a crispy chicken florentine melt.)

These crisp, verdant-hued beauties are simply unripe tomatoes, meaning they’re picked before the fruit ripen, which is when they turn red. Green tomatoes retain their shape when cooked, making them ideal for pickling and the classic southern recipe of Fried Green Tomatoes.

These grocery store staples are oblong, grape-shaped tomatoes—hence their name! They are smaller than cherry tomatoes and tend to also be denser and meatier texturally. Their small size makes them great for snacking or adding to a quick and easy pasta salad.

Picture a standard, run of the mill grocery store tomato—that's actually a globe tomato, a round medium-sized tomato known for its thick skin, which makes it resilient and hearty. Mild in flavor, globe tomatoes are versatile and work well sliced fresh in a sandwich, finely chopped for salsa or cooked down into a sauce.

Also known as Roma or paste tomatoes, plum tomatoes are easily recognized by their signature oval-shape, resembling a kiwi. These are the tomatoes most often used for canned tomatoes and are preferable when making a sauce, as they are meatier in texture and have less seeds and a lower water content than that of other tomatoes. The plum tomatoes dense structure makes it the perfect candidate for a stuffed, roasted tomato like Ree's roasted ricotta Roma tomatoes.

As their name suggests, heirloom tomatoes are a variety that's been in cultivation for years—as in 50 to 100 years! They're only available during the summer, when tomatoes are meant to be in season, as heirlooms are grown through natural pollination. They're pricier and more fragile than their hybrid counterparts—the smooth-skinned, human-cultivated tomatoes found in supermarkets—and come in all shapes, sizes and colors. Flavor-wise, heirloom tomatoes are prized for the taste.

Tomatoes sold on the vine are grown in greenhouses and keeping them attached prolongs their shelf-life. Their quality of flavor is inconsistent and even at their best, vine-ripened tomatoes tend to be mild in flavor. They can be sliced for sandwiches and burger, chopped and added to salad, or cooked down into a sauce.