How long doesCaviarlast in the fridge once opened?
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
- Unopened · in the fridge1 week to 4 weeks
- Once opened · in the fridge2 days
Turning the range into a date
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.
- Unopened · 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
Is this window about safety or about taste?
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, 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.
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 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 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?
Among the 17 items the USDA files under Seafood, this item ranks 2 by how long it keeps outside the freezer. Herring, glass packed, in wine sauce holds 6 months, Shucked clams, mussels, and oysters holds 10 days. Among the 340 foods the USDA also gives a refrigerator figure, it keeps longer than 70% of them.
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 days sealed in the fridge
- Fresh clams, mussels, oysterskeeps 5 days sealed in the fridge
- Cooked fish, allkeeps 3 days in the fridge
- Crab legs, king, dungeness, snowkeeps 2 days sealed in the fridge
- Cooked shellfish, allkeeps 3 days in the fridge
- Fishkeeps 3 days in the fridgeraw but headed and gutted
Products the USDA rates in the same places
6 other products are rated in exactly these places — refrigerator from the day of purchase and refrigerator after opening — out of the 466 in the file, so this is an uncommon shape of record. The nearest of them by keeping time are Cottage cheese, Bamboo shoots and Ricotta. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. Of the 6 shown, 2 keep longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Horseradish at 12 months.
- Cottage cheese1 week in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Bamboo shoots5 days in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Ricotta1 week in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Kefir1 day in the fridge once openedup to 1 week sealed in the fridge
- Vegan Cheddar Cheese3 days in the fridge once openedup to 4 months sealed in the fridge
- Horseradish3 months in the fridge once openedup to 12 months sealed in the fridge
Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.
- Crab meat1 day in the fridgefresh
- Shucked clams3 days sealed in the fridge
The rest of the Fresh shelf
Fresh is a short shelf: 3 products besides this one. They run from Cooked fish at 4 days down to Fatty fish at 2 days, and this product sits with 0 products above it. A shelf this small is worth reading whole, which is why every one of them is printed below rather than a sample. Across the whole of Seafood the same product ranks 2 of 17. The middle of the shelf is Lean fish, at 2 days. The shelf is the source's own subcategory, Fresh inside Seafood.
- Cooked fish4 days3 days in the fridge
- Lean fish2 days1 day sealed in the fridge
- Fatty fish2 days1 day sealed in the fridge
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 4 weeks, Seafood offers 1 product that holds at least twice as long outside the freezer. The nearest step up is Herring at 6 months against this one's 4 weeks, and the rest are none beyond it. A short list like this one is itself the finding: the category has few longer options. In the other direction, 15 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Shucked clams and Fresh clams among them. The largest step the category offers is Herring at 6 months.
- Herring6 months4 months sealed in the fridge
The record this page is built from
This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 147 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 2 of the nine storage slots with a time, and the binding figure on it is printed by the source in weeks, which is the unit this page keeps rather than converting it to days. 1 slot is marked not recommended, which is an answer rather than a gap.
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: 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.