How long doesFresh pastalast in the fridge?

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 refrigerator figure alone spans 1 day to 2 days, a factor of two.

Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item

The USDA rates this item cold or frozen and never at room temperature: no pantry figure exists for it, as for 222 of the 466 foods in the data that get no pantry time at all.

• In the freezer2 months
• In the fridge1 day to 2 days

Turning the range into a date

The window here is 2 days, short enough that the day it went in is worth writing down. The field for this one is at the top of the page, above the answer it changes.

• In the freezerUse by2 months after the day you stored it
• In the fridgeUse by1 day to 2 days after the day you stored 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 and not the shelf the source files it on: Fresh pasta is cooked or ready to eat and still moist. 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 figure in the freezer here is 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 Fresh pasta 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?

This item is the shortest-lived thing the USDA files under Grains, Beans & Pasta: 2 days, where the item above it, Whole wheat bread, holds 5 days and the middle of the 23-item list sits at 6 months.

Items that behave the same way

All 6 of the nearest items keep at least as long as this item, 5 days to 1 year against its 2 days: it is the bottom of its own cluster.

• Whole wheat breadkeeps 3 days in the pantrycommercially baked & pre-sliced
• Tortillaskeeps 3 months in the fridge once openedflour
• Amaranthkeeps 4 months in the pantrywhole grain
• Bulgurkeeps 6 months in the pantry
• Lentils, driedkeeps 1 year in the pantry once opened
• Mung beankeeps 1 year in the fridgedry, food-grade bags

Products the USDA rates in the same places

This is a common shape of record: 33 of the 466 products are rated in the same places, freezer and refrigerator, and 7 of the nine slots are left blank on all of them. Sorted by how close their windows are to this one, the nearest are Stuffed, raw chicken breasts, Rabbit and Bananas, and the rest of that group is what the list below draws on. Of the 8 shown, 6 keep longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Egg dishes at 4 days.

• Stuffed, raw chicken breasts1 day in the fridge
• Rabbit2 days in the fridge
• Bananas3 days in the fridge
• Parsley2 days in the fridge
• Bratwurst2 days in the fridgefresh
• Egg dishes3 days in the fridge
• Cooked poultry dishes3 days in the fridge
• Fried chicken3 days in the fridge

The rest of the Grains, Beans & Pasta shelf

Every one of the other 22 products on the Grains, Beans & Pasta shelf keeps longer outside the freezer than this one, from Quinoa at 3 years down to Whole wheat bread at 5 days. The closest of them by window are Whole wheat bread, Buckwheat and Millet, and the gap between this product and the rest of its shelf is the thing worth noticing here. The order counts the longest window outside the freezer, so this item sits here at 2 days rather than at the 1 day in the fridge its own answer prints.

• Whole wheat bread5 days3 days in the pantry
• Buckwheat2 months2 months in the pantry
• Millet2 months2 months in the pantry
• Tortillas3 months3 months in the fridge once opened
• Amaranth4 months4 months in the pantry
• Oats4 months4 months in the pantry
• Sorghum4 months4 months in the pantry
• Teff4 months4 months in the pantry

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 2 days, the Grains, Beans & Pasta aisle gives 22 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Whole wheat bread at 5 days against this one's 2 days; after it come Buckwheat, Millet and Tortillas. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. The largest step the category offers is Refried beans at 3 years. Freezing this one instead would reach 2 months, which the comparison above leaves out on purpose.

• Whole wheat bread5 days3 days in the pantry
• Buckwheat2 months2 months in the pantry
• Millet2 months2 months in the pantry
• Tortillas3 months3 months in the fridge once opened
• Amaranth4 months4 months in the pantry
• Oats4 months4 months in the pantry
• Sorghum4 months4 months in the pantry
• Teff4 months4 months in the pantry

The record this page is built from

This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 332 — 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 source prints its binding figure in days, so the window at the top of this page is the source's own number untouched. Every figure here comes from one fixed snapshot, USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026, and is not refreshed page by page.

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: pasta

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.