How long doesBasillast in the fridge?
The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately
The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — dried and fresh — and they do not keep for the same time: Basil, fresh holds 10 days outside the freezer, Basil, dried holds 12 months. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Basil, fresh, 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.
A short window, and what shortens it further
Basil, fresh is one of the short-lived entries in the data: 10 days outside the freezer, position 45 of 89 in the Produce list. At that scale a day of delay is a large share of the whole window, which is why the figure is printed as a range rather than an average.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The USDA gives this item a pantry and a refrigerator figure and no freezer figure at all, the pattern behind 79 of the 466 foods in the data. The source also indexes it as dried and fresh.
Basil, dried
- In the pantry12 months
Basil, fresh
- In the pantry5 days
- In the fridge10 days
What the USDA adds in words
The USDA attaches 2 handling notes to this item, reproduced below word for word. None of them is a storage time: they qualify the figures above rather than replacing them. These are the source's own sentences, not ours, and they are the part of the FoodKeeper record that a table of durations cannot carry.
Basil, fresh, in the refrigerator. Will start to discolor.
Basil, fresh, in the pantry. Keep stems in water.
Turning the range into a date
Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 3 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.
Basil, dried
- In the pantryUse by12 months after the day you stored it
Basil, fresh
- In the pantryUse by5 days after the day you stored it
- In the fridgeUse by10 days after the day you stored it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
The answer at the top of this page reads 10 days in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Basil, fresh is raw and whole. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.
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 Basil, fresh past its 10 days in the fridge window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Mold, a slimy or sticky surface, soft or darkened spots, or a sour smell mean it goes out whatever the date says.
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.
Two places, and one of them is the wrong one
The USDA rates two places for Basil, fresh in one state and they disagree: 10 days in the fridge against 5 days in the pantry. This page answers with the refrigerator, the longer of the two. Both figures are the USDA's own, so this is a choice of where to put the food rather than a disagreement about how long it keeps.
Is that a long time?
3 items in the Produce list keep exactly as long as Basil, fresh, 10 days, so they all share place 45 of 89 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 48% of them.
Items that behave the same way
Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 1 week to 10 days against the 10 days of Basil, fresh, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
13 other products are rated in exactly these places — pantry and refrigerator — out of the 466 in the file, so this is an uncommon shape of record. The nearest of them by keeping time are Cherry tomatoes, Cilantro and Mint. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. Of the 8 shown, 7 keep longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Cilantro at 3 weeks. Counted more loosely, by which of the three places are rated at all, 79 products match this one.
- Cherry tomatoes10 days in the pantry
- Cilantro2 weeks in the fridge
- Mint2 weeks in the fridge
- Oregano2 weeks in the fridge
- Rosemary2 weeks in the fridge
- Chives2 weeks in the fridge
- Thyme2 weeks in the fridge
- Apple cider2 weeks in the fridge
The rest of the Fresh Vegetables shelf
The USDA puts this product on the Fresh Vegetables shelf together with 58 others, and 30 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Kimchi at 12 months down to Corn on the cob at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Bean sprouts, Cherry tomatoes and Lemongrass, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Produce the same product ranks 45 of 89. The middle of the shelf is Swiss chard, at 2 weeks. The shelf is the source's own subcategory, Fresh Vegetables inside Produce.
- Bean sprouts10 days5 days sealed in the fridge
- Cherry tomatoes10 days10 days in the pantry
- Lemongrass9 days7 days sealed in the fridge
- Eggplant7 days4 days sealed in the fridge
- Mushrooms7 days3 days sealed in the fridge
- Rhubarb7 days3 days sealed in the fridge
- Taro7 days7 days sealed in the pantry
- Yuca/cassava7 days7 days sealed in the pantry
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 10 days, the Produce aisle gives 28 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Citrus fruit at 21 days against this one's 10 days; after it come Coconuts, Carrots and Ginger root. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 24 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Apricots and Peaches among them. The largest step the category offers is Coconut at 1 year.
- Citrus fruit21 days10 days sealed in the pantry
- Coconuts3 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Carrots3 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Ginger root3 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Rutabagas3 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Kumquats3 weeks3 weeks in the fridge
- Yams/sweet potatoes3 weeks2 weeks sealed in the pantry
- Pitaya/dragon fruit3 weeks2 days in the pantry
The record this page is built from
The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 508 and 509 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 2 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Basil, fresh, 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 record carries 2 handling notes, quoted on this page word for word.
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: dried, fresh
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.