How long does Kimchi last in the fridge?
Turning the range into a date
Kimchi keeps 6–12 months in the fridge from purchase. Counting 12 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 by6 months to 12 months after the day you bought it
The methods the USDA actually rates for this item
The USDA rates only 1 of its nine storage methods for this item, and the refrigerator from the day of purchase is what it rates. The other 8 slots are blank, and a blank is not a zero: it means no published figure, not that the method fails. On the same shelf it sits 2 of 89, between Dates at 12 months and Tamarind at 6 months.
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 Produce it is filed under Fresh Vegetables.
- From purchase · in the fridge6 months to 12 months
Can you freeze kimchi?
The USDA prints no freezer time for kimchi. Frozen at 0 °F any food stays safe; whether it is still good after thawing is a matter of quality. Keep the fridge at 40 °F or below and the freezer at 0 °F.
How to tell if kimchi has gone bad
Go by the date first: kimchi keeps 6–12 months in the fridge. Mold, slime, a sour smell or soft dark spots mean it goes out; firm produce can be saved by cutting 1 inch around a small moldy spot, soft produce cannot. Refrigerate cut or peeled produce within 2 hours.
Sources: USDA FSIS: the danger zone USDA FSIS: freezing and food safety USDA FSIS: molds on food 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 6 months to 12 months in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Kimchi is acid, dry, sweet, alcoholic or pure fat. 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 Kimchi past its 6 months to 12 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
The 6 items below are the closest match to this item by storage behavior, running 3 months to 1 year and bracketing its 12 months.
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.
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.