How long doesMuffinlast in the pantry?

The USDA rates 3 kinds of this separately

The USDA files 3 separate entries under this name — homemade - including bran, blueberry, banana, corn, chocolate chip, commercially packaged and mix, dry, commercially packaged — and they do not keep for the same time: Muffin, homemade - including bran, blueberry, banana, corn, chocolate chip holds 3 days to 7 days outside the freezer, Muffin, mix, dry, commercially packaged holds 9 months.

Freezing changes the unit, not just the number

Here the freezer does not so much extend the answer as replace it. 7 days in the pantry becomes 3 months in the freezer: 13 times longer, and days turning into months. The pantry figure alone spans 3 days to 7 days, a factor of 2.3.

Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item

An unusual pairing: the USDA rates the pantry and the freezer for this item but skips the refrigerator entirely, one of 126 foods of the 466 that get no refrigerator time. The source also indexes it as homemade including bran, homemade, bran and blueberry.

Muffin, homemade - including bran, blueberry, banana, corn, chocolate chip

• In the freezer2 months to 3 months
• In the pantry3 days to 7 days

Muffin, commercially packaged

• In the freezer3 months
• In the pantry3 days to 7 days

Muffin, mix, dry, commercially packaged

• In the pantry9 months

What the USDA adds in words

The USDA attaches 2 handling notes to this item, reproduced below word for word. None of them is a storage time: they qualify the figures above rather than replacing them. These are the source's own sentences, not ours, and they are the part of the FoodKeeper record that a table of durations cannot carry.

Muffin, homemade - including bran, blueberry, banana, corn, chocolate chip, in the refrigerator. Refrigeration not recommended - muffin will quickly dry out and become stale.

Muffin, commercially packaged, in the refrigerator. Refrigeration not recommended - muffin will quickly dry out and become stale.

Turning the range into a date

Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 5 rows across the 3 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Muffin, homemade - including bran, blueberry, banana, corn, chocolate chip

• In the freezerUse by2 months to 3 months after the day you stored it
• In the pantryUse by3 days to 7 days after the day you stored it

Muffin, commercially packaged

• In the freezerUse by3 months after the day you stored it
• In the pantryUse by3 days to 7 days after the day you stored it

Muffin, mix, dry, commercially packaged

• In the pantryUse by9 months after the day you stored it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 3 days to 7 days in the pantry. The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying Muffin, commercially packaged keeps there, so the figure rates how good it will be. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.

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 Muffin, commercially packaged past its 3 days to 7 days in the pantry window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Mold takes the whole package out rather than the slice it grew on, and so does a musty or old-oil smell in a flour or a mix.

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?

3 items in the Baked Goods list keep exactly as long as Muffin, commercially packaged, 7 days, so they all share place 42 of 52 rather than being put in an order the data does not support. Among the 244 foods the USDA also gives a pantry figure, it keeps longer than 38% of them.

Items that behave the same way

The 6 items below are the closest match to Muffin, commercially packaged by storage behavior, running 4 days to 10 days and bracketing its 7 days.

• Cheesecakekeeps exactly as long
• Fruit pies, apple, peach, blueberry, apricot, cherry, blackberrykeeps exactly as long
• Quichekeeps 3 days in the fridge once opened
• Commercial cakes and muffinskeeps 3 days sealed in the pantryup to 10 days in the fridge once opened
• Cream pies, banana cream, coconut cream, butterscotchkeeps 3 days in the fridge once opened
• Herbskeeps 7 days sealed in the fridge

Products the USDA rates in the same places

14 other products are rated in exactly these places — freezer and pantry — out of the 466 in the file, so this is an uncommon shape of record. The nearest of them by keeping time are Whole wheat bread, Cinnamon rolls and Bagel. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. Of the 8 shown, 4 keep longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Amaranth at 4 months. Counted more loosely, by which of the three places are rated at all, 16 products match this one.

• Whole wheat bread3 days in the pantrycommercially baked & pre-sliced
• Cinnamon rolls1 day in the pantrybaked
• Bagel1 day in the pantryfresh baked
• Macaroons1 day in the pantry
• Buckwheat2 months in the pantrywhole grain
• Millet2 months in the pantrywhole grain
• Amaranth4 months in the pantrywhole grain
• Oats4 months in the pantrywhole grain

The rest of the Bakery shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Bakery shelf together with 15 others, and 6 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Pastries at 14 months down to Macaroons at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Cheesecake, Fruit pies and Quiche, which is the order the list below is printed in. The order counts the longest window outside the freezer, so Muffin, commercially packaged sits here at 7 days rather than at the 3 days in the pantry its own answer prints.

• Cheesecake7 days5 days in the fridge once opened
• Fruit pies1 week1 day in the pantry
• Quiche5 days3 days in the fridge once opened
• Commercial cakes and muffins10 days3 days sealed in the pantry
• Cream pies4 days3 days in the fridge once opened
• Dairy filled eclairs3 days2 days in the fridge once opened
• Doughnuts2 days1 day sealed in the pantry
• Chiffon pies2 days1 day in the fridge once opened

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 7 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 7 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, 6 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Dairy filled eclairs and Cinnamon rolls among them.

• 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 3 separate rows under this name — records 451, 452 and 453 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 2 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Muffin, commercially packaged, 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 record carries 2 handling notes, quoted on this page word for word.

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: banana, blueberry, bran, chip, chocolate, chocolate chip, commercial, commercially, commercially packaged, corn, dry, homemade, homemade including bran, including bran, mix, packaged

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.