How long doHerbslast in the fridge?

The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately

The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — dried and USDA record 288 — and they do not keep for the same time: Herbs holds 7 days to 10 days outside the freezer, Herbs, dried holds 1 year to 2 years.

Freezing changes the unit, not just the number

Here the freezer does not so much extend the answer as replace it. 10 days in the sealed fridge becomes 2 months in the freezer: 6 times longer, and days turning into months. The freezer from the day of purchase 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 dried.

Herbs, dried

• Unopened · in the pantry1 year to 2 years
• Once opened · in the pantry1 year to 2 years

Herbs

• In the freezer1 month to 2 months
• Unopened · in the fridge7 days to 10 days

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.

Herbs, dried

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by1 year to 2 years after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the pantryUse by1 year to 2 years after the day you opened it

Herbs

• In the freezerUse by1 month to 2 months after the day you bought it
• Unopened · in the fridgeUse by7 days to 10 days after the day you bought it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 7 days to 10 days in the fridge. Nothing here names the food: neither Herbs nor the heading it sits under says whether it spoils dangerously or keeps itself. Past it, take the shorter of the two answers: we would rather print that the record does not settle it than pick one for you.

The figures in the pantry, in the pantry once opened and in the freezer 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 Herbs past its 7 days to 10 days in the fridge window. Nothing here settles whether that date is a limit or a matter of taste. If the food is moist, low in acid and ready to eat — a sauce, a drink, a filling — treat the date as a limit and throw it out untasted; otherwise look and smell, and out it goes if either is off.

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?

2 items in the Baked Goods list keep exactly as long as Herbs, 10 days, so they all share place 40 of 52 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 48% 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 10 days of Herbs, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.

• Commercial cakes and muffinskeeps exactly as long
• Cheesecakekeeps 5 days in the fridge once opened
• Fruit pies, apple, peach, blueberry, apricot, cherry, blackberrykeeps 1 day in the pantryup to 1 week in the fridge once opened
• Muffinkeeps 3 days in the pantrycommercially packaged
• Quichekeeps 3 days in the fridge once opened
• Cream pies, banana cream, coconut cream, butterscotchkeeps 3 days in the fridge once opened

Products the USDA rates in the same places

Only 1 other product in the whole file carries the same set of rated places as this one, freezer from the day of purchase, pantry from the day of purchase, pantry after opening and refrigerator from the day of purchase: Mushrooms. That is 1 product out of 466, which makes this a rare shape of record rather than a common one, and it is worth knowing that the comparison below is drawn from a very small group. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does.

• Mushrooms3 days sealed in the fridge

Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.

• Garlic1 month sealed in the pantry
• Commercial cakes and muffins3 days sealed in the pantryup to 10 days in the fridge once opened
• Commercial bread products14 days sealed in the pantry
• Cookies2 months sealed in the pantrysoft
• Fruit cake6 months sealed in the pantryup to 12 months in the fridge once opened
• Flour6 months in the pantry once openedwhite
• Gelatin3 months in the pantry once openedflavored · up to 12 months sealed in the pantry

The rest of the Baking and Cooking shelf

Every one of the other 34 products on the Baking and Cooking shelf keeps longer outside the freezer than this one, from Baking soda at 3 years down to Garlic at 1 month. The closest of them by window are Garlic, Flavored or herb mixes and Biscuit or pancake mix, 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 Herbs sits here at 10 days rather than at the 7 days sealed in the fridge its own answer prints.

• Garlic1 month1 month sealed in the pantry
• Flavored or herb mixes6 months6 months sealed in the pantry
• Biscuit or pancake mix9 months9 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

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 10 days, the Baked Goods aisle gives 39 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Commercial bread products at 3 weeks against this one's 10 days; after it come Garlic, Cookies and Bread. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 8 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Quiche and Cream pies among them. The largest step the category offers is Spice/spices at 3 years.

• Commercial bread products3 weeks14 days sealed in the pantry
• Garlic1 month1 month sealed in the pantry
• Cookies3 months2 months sealed in the pantry
• Bread3 months2 months in the fridge
• Flavored or herb mixes6 months6 months sealed in the pantry
• Biscuit or pancake mix9 months9 months sealed in the pantry
• Fruit cake12 months6 months sealed in the pantry
• Flour12 months6 months in the pantry once opened

The record this page is built from

The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 236 and 288 — 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 Herbs, 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 dried 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: dried, herb

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.