How long does Bacon grease last in the fridge?
Turning the range into a date
Bacon grease keeps 6 months in the fridge. Counting 6 months forward from a date is not arithmetic anyone does reliably in their head. Give the field the day it went into storage.
- In the freezerUse by12 months after the day you stored it
- In the fridgeUse by6 months after the day you stored it
The freezer helps less here than you would expect
The freezer buys less here than its reputation suggests: 2 times what the refrigerator gives, 6 months against 12 months, both still measured in months. For this item freezing is an extension rather than a different way of keeping it. On the same shelf it sits 29 of 41, between Pesto, jarred at 6 months and Hot sauce at 6 months.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The USDA rates this item cold or frozen and never at room temperature: no pantry figure exists for it, as for 222 of the 466 foods in the data that get no pantry time at all.
- In the freezer12 months
- In the fridge6 months
Can you freeze bacon grease?
Yes. The USDA gives bacon grease 12 months in the freezer, and held at 0 °F food stays safe beyond that: the figure is about quality. A sealed jar or can does not need the freezer; leftovers from an opened one freeze better in a small airtight container.
How to tell if bacon grease has gone bad
Go by the date first: bacon grease keeps 6 months in the fridge. A bulging, leaking or badly dented can, or a jar whose lid has popped, goes out unopened; so does mold or fizzing in an opened one. Once opened, keep it in the fridge at 40 °F or below.
Sources: USDA FSIS: the danger zone USDA FSIS: freezing and food safety FDA: are you storing food safely FoodSafety.gov: the FoodKeeper app.
Is it still safe to eat, or just past its best?
The answer at the top of this page reads 6 months in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Bacon grease is rendered fat with no water in it. Past it, whether it has gone bad is yours to judge by look and smell: this window rates quality, not the day it turns hazardous.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the calculator above puts Bacon grease past its 6 months in the fridge window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. A jar or can that is bulging, leaking or rusted goes out unopened, and so does an opened one with mold at the rim or a sour, fizzing smell.
The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.
Items that behave the same way
All 4 of the 6 items nearest this item keep exactly as long as it does, 6 months, so the ranking around it is a tie rather than an order.
Where these numbers come from
Every storage time on this page is the USDA’s own published figure from the FoodKeeper data, one of the 9 it keeps per food, reproduced unchanged and never an estimate of ours. Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, each kind keeps its own windows, and the page names the kind its answer is for. The dates and multipliers are ours, computed from those ranges.
Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page. How the site is built is on the method page.
USDA index terms: bacon, grease
KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.