Food Storage

“Is this still good?” is one of the hardest questions to answer honestly, because most storage advice mixes up two very different things: how long food stays safe, and how long it stays good. Those aren’t the same, and confusing them leads people to either throw out perfectly fine food or eat something they shouldn’t.

On this page, refrigerator times should generally be treated as safe-storage guidance, while freezer times are almost always about quality. Food kept continuously frozen at 0°F (-18°C) stays safe indefinitely, although its quality declines over time.

The two rules that matter most

Set your fridge to 40°F (4°C) or below, and your freezer to 0°F (-18°C)

Bacteria multiply fastest between 40°F and 140°F (4°C and 60°C) — the range food safety authorities call the danger zone. Every storage time below assumes your fridge is actually cold enough. A fridge thermometer costs very little and is the single most useful check you can make.

The two-hour rule

Don’t leave perishable food at room temperature for more than 2 hours — or 1 hour if it’s above 90°F (32°C), such as a summer picnic or a hot car.

This is the firmest limit on the page and the one most often broken. It’s also cumulative: putting food in the fridge afterwards doesn’t reset the clock or undo the time it already spent warm.

How long does it keep?

Cooked chicken and leftovers

3 to 4 days in the refrigerator. That applies to cooked chicken and to leftovers generally — cooked dishes, soups and stews. In the freezer, quality holds for around 2 to 6 months for cooked poultry and 3 to 4 months for most leftovers.

Reheat leftovers to 165°F (74°C). Bring soups, sauces and gravies to a rolling boil.

Eggs

Raw eggs in the shell keep 3 to 5 weeks refrigerated. Hard-boiled eggs keep only 1 week. Don’t freeze eggs in the shell.

Raw beef, pork and lamb

  • Ground meat: 1 to 2 days in the fridge, 3 to 4 months frozen
  • Steaks, chops and roasts: 3 to 5 days in the fridge, 4 to 12 months frozen

The gap between ground meat and whole cuts is real, not fussiness. Bacteria live on the surface of a whole cut. Grinding mixes that surface all the way through, which is also why burgers need to be cooked further through than steak.

Raw fish

1 to 2 days in the refrigerator is the conservative figure — US charts give a range of 1 to 3 days, so treat 1 to 2 as your working limit.

Freezer life splits by fat content: oily fish like salmon, tuna and mackerel keep about 2 to 3 months, while lean white fish like cod, haddock and sole keep 6 to 8 months. That difference isn’t a safety issue — the oils in fatty fish go rancid faster.

Milk

Around 5 to 7 days refrigerated, though this is a quality guideline rather than a safety cutoff. We couldn’t find a US federal figure specifically for milk after opening, so treat that number as guidance rather than a hard limit.

Practically speaking, spoiled milk announces itself. Dates on the carton are usually sell-by or best-quality dates, not safety deadlines.

Cooked rice — and why guidance differs by country

Rice deserves its own answer. Uncooked rice can carry Bacillus cereus spores that survive cooking. If cooked rice sits at room temperature, those spores grow into bacteria that produce a toxin — and that toxin is heat-stable, so reheating won’t make the rice safe again.

This is one of the few places where official advice genuinely differs:

  • UK (Food Standards Agency): cool cooked rice within one hour, refrigerate it, use it within 24 hours, and reheat only once.
  • US: there’s no rice-specific figure — cooked rice falls under the general leftovers rule of 3 to 4 days.

If you want the cautious answer, follow the UK guidance. Either way, the important part is cooling it quickly rather than leaving it on the stove to come down to room temperature on its own.

What shouldn’t go in the fridge

These are quality questions, not safety ones. Nothing here will make you ill — it’ll just taste worse.

  • Tomatoes: don’t refrigerate until fully ripe, because cold degrades the flavour. Once ripe, the fridge is a reasonable way to buy a few extra days.
  • Bread: the fridge actively speeds up staling. Bread keeps 3 to 7 days at room temperature, or 6 to 12 months frozen. Freeze it rather than refrigerate it.
  • Onions: cool, dry, dark, and not touching each other — bulbs pressed together encourage mould.
  • Potatoes: see below, because the advice has actually changed.

Potatoes: the advice has changed

The long-standing guidance was to keep potatoes out of the fridge, partly because cold converts their starch to sugar and changes how they taste and brown.

The UK Food Standards Agency has since reversed its position. Following research reviewed by the Committee on Toxicity, the FSA now says fridge storage doesn’t increase acrylamide potential compared with a room-temperature cupboard, and recommends the fridge as the better option for reducing waste.

Either way, keep potatoes in the dark. Light causes greening, and that part is a genuine safety issue.

A note on these numbers

Storage times here come from US federal guidance (FoodSafety.gov, USDA and FDA) and university extension services, with UK Food Standards Agency guidance noted where it differs. They assume food was fresh when stored and kept properly cold throughout.

When something is borderline, throw it out. To check a specific food and region rather than the general figures above, use the Food Storage Time Finder. No storage chart knows how long your groceries sat in a warm car.

Sources & further reading