How long does Hummus last in the fridge once opened?
Turning the range into a date
Hummus (commercial (pasteurized, with preservatives)) keeps 7 days in the fridge once opened. Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 3 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.
Hummus, commercial (pasteurized, with preservatives)
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by3 months after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by7 days after the day you opened it
Hummus, traditional (no preservatives, not pasteurized)
- In the fridgeUse by7 days after the day you stored it
The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately
The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — commercial (pasteurized, with preservatives) and traditional (no preservatives, not pasteurized) — and they do not keep for the same time: Hummus, traditional (no preservatives, not pasteurized) holds 7 days outside the freezer, Hummus, commercial (pasteurized, with preservatives) holds 3 months.
Why the freezer is not an option here
The USDA marks the freezer as not recommended for every one of the 2 kinds under this name, and for Hummus, commercial (pasteurized, with preservatives) the whole answer is 7 days in the refrigerator after opening. 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. Commercial, pasteurized and preservatives are the same food in the source list.
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. The source also indexes it as commercial, pasteurized, preservatives and preservative.
Hummus, commercial (pasteurized, with preservatives)
- In the freezernot recommended
- Unopened · in the fridge3 months
- Once opened · in the fridge7 days
Hummus, traditional (no preservatives, not pasteurized)
- In the freezernot recommended
- In the fridge7 days
Can you freeze hummus?
The USDA does not recommend freezing hummus. 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 hummus has gone bad
Go by the date first: hummus keeps 7 days in the fridge once opened. An off smell, mold or a slimy film mean it goes out, but leftovers can carry harmful bacteria with none of those signs, so the calendar decides first. Never taste to test.
Sources: USDA FSIS: the danger zone USDA FSIS: freezing and food safety USDA FSIS: leftovers and food safety 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 7 days in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Hummus, commercial (pasteurized, with preservatives) is cooked or ready to eat and still moist. Past it, it is not safe to eat: throw it out without tasting, because bacteria build up while food still looks and smells fine.
The figure in the fridge 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.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the calculator above puts Hummus, commercial (pasteurized, with preservatives) past its 7 days in the fridge once opened 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. 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, 5 days to 80 days against the 3 months of Hummus, commercial (pasteurized, with preservatives), which makes it the durable end of the cluster.
- Canadian baconkeeps 10 days in the fridgesliced · up to 80 days sealed in the fridge
- Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners, with USDA sealkeeps 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Luncheon meat or poultrykeeps 3–5 days in the fridge once openedpre-packaged · up to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Salami, pre-packaged, luncheon/deli meatkeeps 3–5 days in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Cooked ricekeeps 4–6 days in the fridge
- Coleslaw, homemade, preparedkeeps 3–5 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.
Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Hummus, commercial (pasteurized, with preservatives), 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.
USDA index terms: commercial, no preservative, no preservatives, not pasteurized, pasteurized, preservative, preservatives, traditional
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.