How long doesBaconlast in the fridge once opened?
The USDA rates 3 kinds of this separately
Bacon, uncured keeps 4 days, which is shorter than the window this page answers with. The USDA files 3 separate entries under this name — USDA record 79, fully cooked and uncured — and they do not keep for the same time: Bacon holds 1 week outside the freezer, Bacon, fully cooked holds 6 months.
Freezing changes the unit, not just the number
Freezing does not just add time to this item, it changes the unit the answer is written in: 1 week in the sealed fridge against 1 month in the freezer, 4.3 times longer, months in place of weeks.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
All three places the USDA recognizes are rated here — pantry, refrigerator and freezer — which only 65 of the 466 foods in the data manage. The source also indexes it as fully cooked, cooked, uncured and nitrite-free.
Bacon
- In the freezer1 month
- Unopened · in the fridge1 week
- Once opened · in the fridge1 week
Bacon, fully cooked
- Unopened · in the pantry6 months
- Once opened · in the fridge5 days to 14 days
Bacon, uncured
- In the freezer3 weeks to 4 weeks
- In the fridge4 days to 7 days
Turning the range into a date
Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 7 rows across the 3 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.
Bacon
- In the freezerUse by1 month after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by1 week after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by1 week after the day you opened it
Bacon, fully cooked
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by6 months after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by5 days to 14 days after the day you opened it
Bacon, uncured
- In the freezerUse by3 weeks to 4 weeks after the day you stored it
- In the fridgeUse by4 days to 7 days after the day you stored it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
The answer at the top of this page reads 1 week in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Bacon is an animal food, or made with one. Past it, throw it out rather than taste it: a perishable food can carry enough bacteria to make you ill while it still looks and smells fine.
The figures in the freezer, in the pantry and in the freezer here are a quality window. The same page carries windows of more than one kind, so which sentence applies depends on which row you are reading, not on the food. Held at 0 °F food stays safe for as long as it stays frozen, which is why a freezer figure counts as quality on this site whatever the food is. Every figure assumes the food was sound when you stored it, that your refrigerator holds 40 °F or below and your freezer 0 °F or below, and that the package was handled normally.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the calculator above puts Bacon past its 1 week in the fridge once opened window, or the container sat out on the counter overnight. Throw the container out without tasting it, and count any hours it already spent out of the refrigerator as part of that window rather than on top of it.
The USDA's limit for perishable food standing at room temperature is 2 hours, or 1 hour when the kitchen is above 90 °F, and that clock runs whatever the storage figure says. Freezing stops the clock but does not turn it back: food already past its window is not rescued by putting it in the freezer. The FoodKeeper entry this page is built from prints storage times and nothing else, so anything past them here is USDA and FSIS guidance rather than a figure from the source. The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.
Is that a long time?
3 items in the Meat list keep exactly as long as Bacon, 1 week, so they all share place 6 of 17 rather than being put in an order the data does not support. Among the 340 foods the USDA also gives a refrigerator figure, it keeps longer than 53% of them.
Items that behave the same way
Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 2 days to 7 days against the 1 week of Bacon, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.
- Pork rollkeeps exactly as long
- Corned beef, in pouch with pickling juiceskeeps exactly as long
- Venison, round, rump, loin, or rib roastkeeps 3 days sealed in the fridge
- Retort pouches or boxeskeeps 3 days in the fridge once opened
- Bratwurstkeeps 2 days in the fridgefresh
- Sausagekeeps 1 day sealed in the fridgeraw bulk type or patties
Products the USDA rates in the same places
Only 1 other product in the whole file carries the same set of rated places as this one, freezer, freezer from the day of purchase, pantry from the day of purchase, refrigerator, refrigerator from the day of purchase and refrigerator after opening: Ham. That is 1 product out of 466, which makes this a rare shape of record rather than a common one, and it is worth knowing that the comparison below is drawn from a very small group. Counted more loosely, by which of the three places are rated at all, 65 products match this one.
- Ham20 kinds3 days to 6 months
Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.
- Chorizo1 day in the fridgefresh
- Hot dogs1 week in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Jerky2 months in the fridge once openedcommercially dried · up to 12 months sealed in the pantry
- Corned beef5 days sealed in the fridge
- Venison3 days sealed in the fridge
- Bratwurst2 days in the fridgefresh
- Variety meats1 day sealed in the fridge
The rest of the Smoked or Processed shelf
The USDA puts this product on the Smoked or Processed shelf together with 6 others, and 3 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Prosciutto at 3 months down to Sausage at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Corned beef, Pork roll and Sausage, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Meat the same product ranks 6 of 17. The middle of the shelf is Corned beef, at 7 days. The shelf is the source's own subcategory, Smoked or Processed inside Meat.
- Corned beef7 days5 days sealed in the fridge
- Pork roll7 days7 days in the fridge once opened
- Sausage2 days1 day sealed in the fridge
- Hot dogs2 weeks1 week in the fridge once opened
- Pastrami40 days40 days in the fridge
- Prosciutto3 months2 months in the fridge
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 1 week, the Meat aisle gives 5 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Hot dogs at 2 weeks against this one's 1 week; after it come Pastrami, Prosciutto and Jerky. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 7 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Bratwurst and Variety meats among them. The largest step the category offers is Meat products at 5 years.
- Hot dogs2 weeks1 week in the fridge once opened
- Pastrami40 days40 days in the fridge
- Prosciutto3 months2 months in the fridge
- Jerky12 months2 months in the fridge once opened
- Meat products5 years3 days in the fridge once opened
The record this page is built from
The USDA publishes 3 separate rows under this name — records 79, 107 and 683 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 6 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Bacon, which is the kind the plain name means here, chosen kind by kind rather than by the order the source happens to list them in. The same record answers to fully cooked, cooked, uncured and nitrite-free in the source's own index.
Where these numbers come from
Every range on this page is published by the USDA FoodKeeper and reproduced unchanged. The multipliers, the rankings, the percentages and the dates are ours, computed from those ranges. Where the source gives a span such as 3 to 5 weeks, comparisons use the upper figure, and the full span is always printed.
Rankings cover only the items the USDA gives a usable figure for, and identical ranges share a place rather than being ordered arbitrarily. Neighbors are chosen by nearest storage time within the same category, never alphabetically: two foods filed next to each other by name usually have nothing to do with each other. The freezer is excluded from ranking because it flattens almost everything.
Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, they share one page here and every kind keeps its own windows: the source prints them as separate rows, and a page that merged them would be inventing a figure the source never published. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for the kind the plain name means — the shell egg for eggs, the can for tuna — which is settled name by name rather than by the order the source lists its rows in, and the page names it. Where the plain name means no single kind, the page prints no single figure at all and lists the kinds instead.
Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. This site computes every comparison on this page and takes responsibility for it. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page, with the page and the row — the parsing is mechanical, so a mismatch is our bug and we want it. How the whole site is built, which figures are ours and where the source can be checked is on the method page.
USDA index terms: cooked, fully cooked, natural, natural bacon, nitrite, nitrite-free, nitrite-free bacon, uncured, uncured bacon
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.