How long doesNacho cheeselast in the fridge once opened?
What opening the package actually costs
Opening the package is the decision that settles this page. Sealed, the item holds 2 years sealed in the pantry; once open it holds 2 weeks open in the fridge, the same food measured in weeks instead of years, a drop of 52 times.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
All three places the USDA recognizes are rated here — pantry, refrigerator and freezer — which only 65 of the 466 foods in the data manage.
- In the freezer3 months
- Unopened · in the pantry2 years
- Once opened · in the fridge2 weeks
What the USDA adds in words
The USDA attaches 1 handling note to this item, reproduced below word for word. It is not a storage time: it qualifies the figure above rather than replacing it. 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.
In the freezer. Freezing not recommended - may negatively impact the texture.
Turning the range into a date
Two clocks run on this item: one from the day it went into storage and one from the day the seal broke. Both are listed below, 3 rows in all.
- In the freezerUse by3 months after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by2 years after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by2 weeks after the day you opened it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
The answer at the top of this page reads 2 weeks in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Nacho cheese, store bought is an animal food, or made with one. Past it, throw it out rather than taste it: a perishable food can carry enough bacteria to make you ill while it still looks and smells fine.
The figures in the freezer and in the pantry here are 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. 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 Nacho cheese, store bought past its 2 weeks 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. 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 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?
2 items in the Dairy Products & Eggs list keep exactly as long as this item, 2 years, so they all share place 2 of 29 rather than being put in an order the data does not support. Among the 340 foods the USDA also gives a refrigerator figure, it keeps longer than 53% of them.
Items that behave the same way
Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 5 weeks to 2 years against the 2 years of this item, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
Only 3 other products in the whole file carry the same set of rated places as this one, freezer from the day of purchase, pantry from the day of purchase and refrigerator after opening: Fruit cake, Commercial bread products and Commercial cakes and muffins. That is 3 products out of 466, which makes this a rare shape of record rather than a common one, and it is worth knowing that the comparison below is drawn from a very small group. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does.
- Fruit cake6 months sealed in the pantryup to 12 months in the fridge once opened
- Commercial bread products14 days sealed in the pantry
- Commercial cakes and muffins3 days sealed in the pantryup to 10 days in the fridge once opened
Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.
- Coconut milk7 days in the fridge once opened
- Egg substitutes3 days in the fridge
- Margarine6 months sealed in the fridge
- Vegan Cheddar Cheese3 days in the fridge once openedup to 4 months sealed in the fridge
- Butter1 month sealed in the fridge
The rest of the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf
The USDA puts this product on the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf together with 28 others, and 1 of them keeps longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Powdered milk at 5 years down to Pudding at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Ghee, Margarine and String Cheese, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Dairy Products & Eggs the same product ranks 2 of 29. The middle of the shelf is Whipped topping, at 2 weeks.
- Ghee2 years1 year in the fridge
- Margarine6 months6 months sealed in the fridge
- String Cheese5 months5 months sealed in the fridge
- Vegan Cheddar Cheese4 months3 days in the fridge once opened
- Butter2 months1 month sealed in the fridge
- Eggs5 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Whipped cream4 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Pimento cheese4 weeks4 weeks in the fridge once opened
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 2 years, Dairy Products & Eggs offers 1 product that holds at least twice as long outside the freezer. The nearest step up is Powdered milk at 5 years against this one's 2 years, and the rest are none beyond it. A short list like this one is itself the finding: the category has few longer options. In the other direction, 26 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Margarine and String Cheese among them.
- Powdered milk5 years3 months in the pantry once opened
The record this page is built from
This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 477 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 3 of the nine storage slots with a time, and the binding figure on it is printed by the source in years, which is the unit this page keeps rather than converting it to days. The record carries 1 handling note, quoted on this page word for word. Every figure here comes from one fixed snapshot, USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026, and is not refreshed page by page.
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: cheese, nacho, Nacho cheese, store, store bought
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.