How long does Pastrami last in the fridge?
Turning the range into a date
Pastrami keeps 40 days in the fridge. One row, one deadline: 40 days in the refrigerator, counted from the day it went in rather than the day it was made.
- In the fridgeUse by40 days after the day you stored it
A short window, and what shortens it further
This item is one of the short-lived entries in the data: 40 days outside the freezer, position 4 of 19 in the Meat list. At that scale a day of delay is a large share of the whole window, which is why the figure is printed as a range rather than an average. On the same shelf it sits 4 of 19, between Prosciutto at 3 months and Hot dogs at 2 weeks.
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 Meat it is filed under Smoked or Processed.
- In the fridge40 days
Can you freeze pastrami?
The USDA prints no freezer time for pastrami. 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 pastrami has gone bad
Go by the date first: pastrami keeps 40 days in the fridge. Look for a slimy film, a sour smell or mold. A deli package past its window goes out even if it looks fine: listeria grows in the cold without changing how meat looks.
Sources: USDA FSIS: the danger zone USDA FSIS: freezing 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 40 days in the fridge. What decides that is the food: the source files Pastrami under Meat, a heading it keeps for perishable food. Past it, it is not safe to eat: throw it out without tasting, because bacteria build up while food still looks and smells fine.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the calculator above puts Pastrami past its 40 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. 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
Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 4 days to 2 weeks against the 40 days of this item, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.
- Hot dogskeeps 1 week in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks in the fridge
- Pork rollkeeps 7 days in the fridge once opened
- Baconkeeps 1 week in the fridge once opened
- Corned beef, in pouch with pickling juiceskeeps 5–7 days in the fridge
- Venison, round, rump, loin, or rib roastkeeps 3–5 days in the fridge
- Retort pouches or boxeskeeps 3–4 days in the fridge once opened
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.