How long does Chorizo last in the fridge?
Turning the range into a date
Chorizo (fresh) keeps 1–2 days in the fridge. 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.
Chorizo, fresh
- In the freezerUse by1 month to 2 months after the day you stored it
- In the fridgeUse by1 day to 2 days after the day you stored it
Chorizo, smoked and processed, uncooked
- In the freezerUse by1 month to 2 months after the day you stored it
- In the fridgeUse by1 week after the day you stored it
Chorizo, smoked and processed, cooked
- In the freezerUse by6 months after the day you stored it
- In the pantryUse by1 year after the day you stored it
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by1 month after the day you opened it
The USDA rates 3 kinds of this separately
The USDA files 3 separate entries under this name — fresh, smoked and processed, uncooked and smoked and processed, cooked — and they do not keep for the same time: Chorizo, fresh holds 1 day to 2 days outside the freezer, Chorizo, smoked and processed, cooked holds 1 year.
Freezing changes the unit, not just the number
Here the freezer does not so much extend the answer as replace it. 2 days in the refrigerator becomes 2 months in the freezer: 30 times longer, and days turning into months. On the same shelf it sits 13 of 19, between Rabbit, whole, fresh at 2 days and Variety meats, liver, tongue, chitterlings, etc. at 2 days. Fresh chorizo, smoked chorizo and processed chorizo are the same food in the source list.
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 smoked, processed, uncooked and cooked.
Chorizo, fresh
- In the freezer1 month to 2 months
- In the fridge1 day to 2 days
Chorizo, smoked and processed, uncooked
- In the freezer1 month to 2 months
- In the fridge1 week
Chorizo, smoked and processed, cooked
- In the freezer6 months
- In the pantry1 year
- Once opened · in the fridge1 month
Can you freeze chorizo?
Yes. The USDA gives chorizo (fresh) 1–2 months in the freezer, and held at 0 °F food stays safe beyond that: the figure is about quality. Wrap it airtight or overwrap the store tray: freezer burn dries the surface but does not make meat unsafe.
How to tell if chorizo has gone bad
Go by the date first: chorizo keeps 1–2 days in the fridge. Signs are a sour or off smell, a sticky or slimy surface and graying or greenish spots. Dangerous bacteria give no such signs, so past the window it goes out even if it seems fine.
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 1 day to 2 days in the fridge. What decides that is the food: the source files Chorizo, fresh under Meat, 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.
The figures in the freezer and in the pantry 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.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the calculator above puts Chorizo, fresh past its 1 day to 2 days in the fridge 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 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 6 of the 6 items nearest Chorizo, fresh keep exactly as long as it does, 2 days, 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.
Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Chorizo, 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.
USDA index terms: cooked, cooked processed chorizo, cooked smoked chorizo, fresh chorizo, processed, processed chorizo, smoked, smoked chorizo, uncooked, uncooked processed chorizo, uncooked smoked chorizo
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.