How long doesCornmeallast in the pantry?
The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately
Cornmeal, stone ground or blue keeps 1 month, which is shorter than the window this page answers with. The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — regular, degerminated and stone ground or blue — and they do not keep for the same time: Cornmeal, stone ground or blue holds 2 months to 4 months outside the freezer, Cornmeal, regular, degerminated holds 2 years.
Built to sit on a shelf
Cornmeal, regular, degerminated is built to sit. It keeps 2 years outside the freezer. Among the 244 foods the USDA also gives a pantry figure, it keeps longer than 70% of them. It is long enough that the date it went into storage matters more than anything you can judge by looking at it.
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 regular, degerminated, germinated and germinate.
Cornmeal, regular, degerminated
- Unopened · in the pantry6 months to 12 months
- Once opened · in the pantry2 years
- Once opened · in the fridgeUnreadable in the source
Cornmeal, stone ground or blue
- Unopened · in the pantry1 month
- Once opened · in the pantrynot recommended
- Once opened · in the fridge2 months to 4 months
Where the USDA answers in words instead of days
1 of the nine slots the USDA keeps for this item holds an answer that is not a number, and an answer in words is still an answer: in the fridge once opened it prints a value we will not read, because the cell is mistyped in the USDA file and guessing at what was meant would be our number rather than theirs.
Turning the range into a date
Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 4 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.
Cornmeal, regular, degerminated
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by6 months to 12 months after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the pantryUse by2 years after the day you opened it
Cornmeal, stone ground or blue
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by1 month after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by2 months to 4 months after the day you opened it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
The answer at the top of this page reads 6 months to 12 months in the pantry. The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying Cornmeal, regular, degerminated keeps there, so the figure rates how good it will be. 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 Cornmeal, regular, degerminated past its 6 months to 12 months in the pantry window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Mold takes the whole package out rather than the slice it grew on, and so does a musty or old-oil smell in a flour or a mix.
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?
15 items in the Baked Goods list keep exactly as long as Cornmeal, regular, degerminated, 2 years, so they all share place 3 of 52 rather than being put in an order the data does not support. Among the 244 foods the USDA also gives a pantry figure, it keeps longer than 70% of them.
Items that behave the same way
All 5 of the 6 items nearest Cornmeal, regular, degerminated keep exactly as long as it does, 2 years, so the ranking around it is a tie rather than an order.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
8 other products are rated in exactly these places — pantry from the day of purchase, pantry after opening 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 Rice, Sun dried tomatoes and Flour. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does.
- Rice1 year in the pantry once openedwhite or wild · up to 2 years sealed in the pantry
- Sun dried tomatoes3 months in the fridge once openedup to 1 year sealed in the pantry
- Flour6 months in the pantry once openedwhite
- Oils3 months in the pantry once openedup to 12 months sealed in the pantry
- Nut oils6 months in the fridge once opened
- Tamarind paste6 months in the pantry once opened
- Fruits, dried6 months in the fridge once opened
- Fruit Juice in cartons8 days in the fridge once openedup to 3 weeks sealed in the pantry
The rest of the Baking and Cooking shelf
The USDA puts this product on the Baking and Cooking shelf together with 34 others, and 2 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Baking soda at 3 years down to Herbs at 10 days. Nearest this product by window are Chocolate, Vegetable oil sprays and Shortening, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Baked Goods the same product ranks 3 of 52. The middle of the shelf is Sugar, at 24 months. The shelf is the source's own subcategory, Baking and Cooking inside Baked Goods.
- Chocolate2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
- Vegetable oil sprays2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
- Shortening2 years6 months in the pantry once opened
- Chili powder2 years2 years in the pantry once opened
- Seasoning blends2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
- Sugar substitutes2 years2 years sealed in the pantry
- Whole wheat flour2 years2 years in the fridge
- Almond extract2 years12 months in the pantry once opened
If it has to keep longer than this
Nothing the USDA files under Baked Goods keeps at least twice as long as this one outside the freezer. It runs the other way: 30 entries in the category keep half as long or less, among them Cocoa and cocoa mixes, Garam masala and Fruit cake. So the question this page answers is not what to buy instead, but what this product outlasts on the same shelf, and by how much. Twice as long is the cutoff used here, so a product a few days apart from this one is not treated as a step.
- Cocoa and cocoa mixes1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
- Garam masala1 year1 year in the pantry
- Fruit cake12 months6 months sealed in the pantry
- Flour12 months6 months in the pantry once opened
- Frosting or icing12 months2 weeks in the fridge once opened
- Gelatin12 months3 months in the pantry once opened
- Oils12 months3 months in the pantry once opened
- Nut oils12 months6 months in the fridge once opened
The record this page is built from
The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 218 and 219 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 3 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Cornmeal, regular, degerminated, 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. 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: blue, corn, degerminated, germinate, germinated, ground, meal, regular, stone, stone ground
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.