How long does Herring last in the fridge?
Turning the range into a date
Herring keeps 4–6 months in the fridge from purchase. Counting 6 months forward from a date is not arithmetic anyone does reliably in their head. Give the field the day it went into storage.
- From purchase · in the fridgeUse by4 months to 6 months after the day you bought it
Why the freezer is not an option here
The USDA marks the freezer as not recommended for this item, so the whole answer is a single field: 4 months to 6 months in the refrigerator from the day of purchase. It is not a warning: food held at 0 °F stays safe, so a not-recommended is a verdict on what would come out of the freezer. It stands 1 of 17 on its shelf, one step above Caviar, fresh, in jar at 4 weeks.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The refrigerator is the only place the USDA gives this item a storage time, as it does for 64 of the 466 foods the USDA lists. Within Seafood it is filed under Smoked.
- In the freezernot recommended
- From purchase · in the fridge4 months to 6 months
Can you freeze herring?
The USDA does not recommend freezing herring. It is not a safety warning, since food held at 0 °F stays safe, but it comes back changed. Keep the fridge at 40 °F or below and the freezer at 0 °F.
How to tell if herring has gone bad
Go by the date first: herring keeps 4–6 months in the fridge. A sour, ammonia-like or strongly fishy smell, milky slime, or flesh that no longer springs back means it goes out. Cook fish until it reaches 145 °F and flakes with a fork.
Sources: USDA FSIS: the danger zone USDA FSIS: freezing and food safety FDA: fresh and frozen seafood 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 4 months to 6 months in the fridge. Herring, glass packed, in wine sauce does spoil, but a bacterial limit runs in days and this window runs past six weeks: the figure rates how good it will be. Past it, whether it has gone bad is yours to judge by look and smell: this window rates quality, not the day it turns hazardous.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the calculator above puts Herring, glass packed, in wine sauce past its 4 months to 6 months in the fridge window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Mold, a slimy or sticky surface, soft or darkened spots, or a sour smell mean it goes out whatever the date says.
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
Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 4 days to 4 weeks against the 6 months of this item, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.
- Caviar, fresh, in jarkeeps 2 days in the fridge once openedup to 4 weeks in the fridge
- Shucked clams, mussels, and oysterskeeps 3–10 days in the fridge
- Fresh clams, mussels, oysterskeeps 5–10 days in the fridge
- Cooked fish, allkeeps 3–4 days in the fridge
- Crab legs, king, dungeness, snowkeeps 2–4 days in the fridge
- Cooked shellfish, allkeeps 3–4 days in the fridge
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.
USDA index terms: glass, glass packed, Herring, packed, sauce, wine, wine sauce
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.