How long doesChorizolast in the fridge?
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. The freezer figure alone spans 1 month to 2 months, a factor of two.
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
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.
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
Is this window about safety or about taste?
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, 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 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. 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 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 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?
6 items in the Meat list keep exactly as long as Chorizo, fresh, 2 days, so they all share place 12 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 71% of them.
Items that behave the same way
All 3 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.
- Sausagekeeps exactly as long
- Rabbit, whole, freshkeeps exactly as long
- Variety meats, liver, tongue, chitterlings, etc.keeps exactly as long
- Bratwurstkeeps 2 days in the fridgefresh
- Retort pouches or boxeskeeps 3 days in the fridge once opened
- Venison, round, rump, loin, or rib roastkeeps 3 days sealed in the fridge
Products the USDA rates in the same places
No other product in the file is rated in exactly this set of places: freezer, pantry, refrigerator and refrigerator after opening, and nothing else. That makes the shape of this record unique among the 466 products here, so the closest comparisons available are the entries that share most of it — Bacon, Jerky and Rabbit. Their windows are printed beside them below, and none of them is rated in quite the same way. Of the 8 shown, 7 keep longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Jerky at 12 months.
Nothing carries this exact set of places, so these share most of it.
- Bacon1 week in the fridge once opened
- Jerky2 months in the fridge once openedcommercially dried · up to 12 months sealed in the pantry
- Rabbit2 days in the fridge
- Bratwurst2 days in the fridgefresh
- Prosciutto2 months in the fridge
- Retort pouches or boxes3 days in the fridge once opened
- Pork roll7 days in the fridge once opened
- Hot dogs1 week in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
The rest of the Fresh shelf
Fresh is a short shelf: 4 products besides this one. They run from Venison at 5 days down to Rabbit at 2 days, and this product sits with 2 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. The order counts the longest window outside the freezer, so Chorizo, fresh sits here at 2 days rather than at the 1 day in the fridge its own answer prints. Across the whole of Meat the same product ranks 12 of 17.
- Variety meats2 days1 day sealed in the fridge
- Rabbit2 days2 days in the fridge
- Bratwurst3 days2 days in the fridge
- Venison5 days3 days sealed in the fridge
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 2 days, the Meat aisle gives 10 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Retort pouches or boxes at 4 days against this one's 2 days; after it come Venison, Bacon and Corned beef. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. The largest step the category offers is Meat products at 5 years. Freezing this one instead would reach 2 months, which the comparison above leaves out on purpose.
- Retort pouches or boxes4 days3 days in the fridge once opened
- Venison5 days3 days sealed in the fridge
- Bacon1 week1 week in the fridge once opened
- Corned beef7 days5 days sealed in the fridge
- Pork roll7 days7 days in the fridge once opened
- Hot dogs2 weeks1 week in the fridge once opened
- Pastrami40 days40 days in the fridge
- Prosciutto3 months2 months in the fridge
The record this page is built from
The USDA publishes 3 separate rows under this name — records 630, 631 and 632 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 4 of the nine storage slots with a time. 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. The same record answers to smoked, processed, uncooked and cooked 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, 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.