How long does Caviar last in the fridge once opened?
Turning the range into a date
Caviar keeps 2 days in the fridge once opened. Two clocks run on this item: one from the day it went into storage and one from the day the seal broke. Both are listed below, 2 rows in all.
- From purchase · in the fridgeUse by1 week to 4 weeks after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by2 days after the day you opened it
Why the freezer is not an option here
The USDA marks the freezer as not recommended for this item, so the answer comes from the refrigerator after opening figure: 2 days. The source fills 2 of its fields outside the freezer here, and every one of them is printed below. It is not a warning: food held at 0 °F stays safe, so a not-recommended is a verdict on what would come out of the freezer.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The refrigerator is the only place the USDA gives this item a storage time, as it does for 64 of the 466 foods the USDA lists. Within Seafood it is filed under Fresh.
- In the freezernot recommended
- From purchase · in the fridge1 week to 4 weeks
- Once opened · in the fridge2 days
Can you freeze caviar?
The USDA does not recommend freezing caviar. It is not a safety warning, since food held at 0 °F stays safe, but it comes back changed. Keep the fridge at 40 °F or below and the freezer at 0 °F.
How to tell if caviar has gone bad
Go by the date first: caviar keeps 2 days in the fridge once opened. A sour, ammonia-like or strongly fishy smell, milky slime, or flesh that no longer springs back means it goes out. Cook fish until it reaches 145 °F and flakes with a fork.
Sources: USDA FSIS: the danger zone USDA FSIS: freezing and food safety FDA: fresh and frozen seafood 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 2 days in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food: the source files Caviar, fresh, in jar under Seafood, a heading it keeps for perishable food. Past it, it is not safe to eat: throw it out without tasting, because bacteria build up while food still looks and smells fine.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the calculator above puts Caviar, fresh, in jar past its 2 days 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. 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
Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 4 days to 10 days against the 4 weeks of this item, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.
- Shucked clams, mussels, and oysterskeeps 3–10 days in the fridge
- Fresh clams, mussels, oysterskeeps 5–10 days in the fridge
- Cooked fish, allkeeps 3–4 days in the fridge
- Crab legs, king, dungeness, snowkeeps 2–4 days in the fridge
- Cooked shellfish, allkeeps 3–4 days in the fridge
- Fishkeeps 6 months in the freezerraw but headed and gutted
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: Caviar, fresh, jar
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.