KeepsUntilSearch My fridgeDeli & Prepared Foods · USDA FoodKeeper

How long do Leftovers last in the fridge?

3 kinds · each with its own window

Leftovers, with meat, fish, poultry, or egg · In the fridge

Use by3 days to 4 days

Counted from the day you stored it

Safety limit · past it, throw it out

How this date is worked out

From KeepsUntilIt is past the dateWhat to do when the window has run out, and when tasting is not a test Where these numbers come fromThe USDA source, the parse rules and what this site cannot tell you Every food on the siteOne page, every product, longest first

Turning the range into a date

Leftovers (with meat, fish, poultry, or egg) keep 3–4 days in the fridge. Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 6 rows across the 3 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Leftovers, with meat, fish, poultry, or egg

In the freezerUse by2 months to 3 months after the day you stored it
In the fridgeUse by3 days to 4 days after the day you stored it

Leftovers, without meat, fish, poultry, or egg (such as cooked vegitables, rice, or potatoes)

In the freezerUse by1 month to 2 months after the day you stored it
In the fridgeUse by3 days to 4 days after the day you stored it

Leftovers, pizza

In the freezerUse by1 month to 2 months after the day you stored it
In the fridgeUse by3 days to 4 days after the day you stored it

Leftovers, with meat, fish, poultry, or egg · In the freezer

2 months to 3 months

Counted from the day you stored it

22×

Leftovers, with meat, fish, poultry, or egg · What the freezer buys you over the refrigerator90 days frozen ÷ 4 days in the fridge

The USDA rates 3 kinds of this separately

The USDA files 3 separate entries under this name — with meat, fish, poultry, or egg, without meat, fish, poultry, or egg (such as cooked vegitables, rice, or potatoes) and pizza — and gives every one of them the same window outside the freezer, 3 days to 4 days. They are separate rows in the source rather than separate answers to the question.

Freezing changes the unit, not just the number

Here the freezer does not so much extend the answer as replace it. 4 days in the refrigerator becomes 3 months in the freezer: 22 times longer, and days turning into months. On the same shelf it sits 12 of 25, between Poultry pieces, covered with gravy or broth at 4 days and Fruit, cut at 4 days. Meat, fish and poultry are the same food in the source list.

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. The source also indexes it as meat, fish, poultry and egg.

Leftovers, with meat, fish, poultry, or egg

In the freezer2 months to 3 months
In the fridge3 days to 4 days

Leftovers, without meat, fish, poultry, or egg (such as cooked vegitables, rice, or potatoes)

In the freezer1 month to 2 months
In the fridge3 days to 4 days

Leftovers, pizza

In the freezer1 month to 2 months
In the fridge3 days to 4 days

From KeepsUntilWhere these numbers come fromThe USDA source, the parse rules and what this site cannot tell you

Can you freeze leftovers?

Yes. The USDA gives leftovers (with meat, fish, poultry, or egg) 2–3 months in the freezer, and held at 0 °F food stays safe beyond that: the figure is about quality. Cool it fast in shallow containers first, then freeze it in portions you will thaw in one go.

How to tell if leftovers have gone bad

Go by the date first: leftovers keep 3–4 days in the fridge. 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 3 days to 4 days in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: it is an animal food, or made with one. 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 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.

It is past the date. Now what?

Say the calculator above puts it past its 3 days to 4 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 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

All 6 of the 6 items nearest Leftovers, with meat, fish, poultry, or egg keep exactly as long as it does, 4 days, so the ranking around it is a tie rather than an order.

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 Leftovers, with meat, fish, poultry, or egg, 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.

Also searched as: leftover pizza, cooked food

USDA index terms: cooked vegetables, egg, fish, leftover, meat, pizza, potato, potatoes, poultry, rice, vegetable, vegetables, without meat

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.