How long doesPastalast in the pantry once opened?
Sealed against opened
Opening the package costs 2 times here: 2 years sealed in the pantry against 1 year open in the pantry. That is a real difference and worth dating the container for, but not the collapse it becomes for the more perishable items in the same list.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The USDA rates this item in the pantry and nowhere else, one of 84 foods of the 466 it files that way.
- Unopened · in the pantry2 years
- Once opened · in the pantry1 year
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, 2 rows in all.
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by2 years after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the pantryUse by1 year after the day you opened it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
The answer at the top of this page reads 1 year in the pantry once opened. The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying Pasta, dry, without eggs 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.
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 Pasta, dry, without eggs past its 1 year in the pantry once opened window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Insects or webbing in the package, a musty or rancid smell, or clumping that says damp got in mean it goes out whatever the date says.
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?
4 items in the Grains, Beans & Pasta list keep exactly as long as this item, 2 years, so they all share place 3 of 23 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 70% of them.
Items that behave the same way
The 6 items below are the closest match to this item by storage behavior, running 12 months to 3 years and bracketing its 2 years.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
This is a common shape of record: 30 of the 466 products are rated in the same places, pantry from the day of purchase and pantry after opening, and 7 of the nine slots are left blank on all of them. Sorted by how close their windows are to this one, the nearest are Textured soy protein, Chocolate and Vegetable oil sprays, and the rest of that group is what the list below draws on. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does.
- Textured soy protein3 months in the pantry once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry
- Chocolate1 year in the pantry once opened
- Vegetable oil sprays1 year in the pantry once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry
- Shortening6 months in the pantry once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry
- Chili powder2 years in the pantry once opened
- Seasoning blends1 year in the pantry once opened
- Beans1 year in the pantry once opened
- Dry egg noodles1 month in the pantry once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry
The rest of the Grains, Beans & Pasta shelf
The USDA puts this product on the Grains, Beans & Pasta shelf together with 22 others, and 2 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Quinoa at 3 years down to Fresh pasta at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Beans, Dry egg noodles and Rice, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Grains, Beans & Pasta the same product ranks 3 of 23. The middle of the shelf is Rye, at 6 months.
- Beans2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
- Dry egg noodles2 years1 month in the pantry once opened
- Rice2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
- Lentils1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
- Peas1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
- Quinoa3 years2 years sealed in the pantry
- Refried beans3 years2 days in the fridge once opened
- Mung bean1 year1 year in the fridge
If it has to keep longer than this
Nothing the USDA files under Grains, Beans & Pasta keeps at least twice as long as this one outside the freezer. It runs the other way: 17 entries in the category keep half as long or less, among them Lentils, Peas and Mung bean. So the question this page answers is not what to buy instead, but what this product outlasts on the same shelf, and by how much. Twice as long is the cutoff used here, so a product a few days apart from this one is not treated as a step.
- Lentils1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
- Peas1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
- Mung bean1 year1 year in the fridge
- Bulgur12 months6 months in the pantry
- Barley6 months6 months in the pantry
- Farro6 months6 months in the pantry
- Rye6 months6 months in the pantry
- Spelt6 months6 months in the pantry
The record this page is built from
This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 335 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 2 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. 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: dry, egg, eggs, Pasta, without egg, without eggs
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.