How long doesPimento cheeselast in the fridge once opened?

The methods the USDA actually rates for this item

The USDA rates only 1 of its nine storage methods for this item, and the refrigerator after opening is what it rates. The other 8 slots are blank, and a blank is not a zero: it means no published figure, not that the method fails.

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.

• Unopened · in the fridgePackage use-by date
• Once opened · in the fridge4 weeks

Where the USDA answers in words instead of days

1 of the nine slots the USDA keeps for this item holds an answer that is not a number, and an answer in words is still an answer: in the fridge it answers with the package date rather than a number, and the use-by date printed on that particular package is the figure to go by.

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, 1 row in all.

• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by4 weeks after the day you opened it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 4 weeks in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Pimento cheese, packaged 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.

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 Pimento cheese, packaged past its 4 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. 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, 4 weeks, so they all share place 9 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 70% of them.

Items that behave the same way

The 6 items below are the closest match to this item by storage behavior, running 2 weeks to 5 weeks and bracketing its 4 weeks.

• Whipped cream, aerosol cankeeps exactly as long
• Eggskeeps 3 weeks sealed in the fridgein shell
• Coffee creamerkeeps 3 weeks sealed in the fridgeliquid refrigerated
• Dips, sour cream basedkeeps 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Whipped toppingkeeps 2 weeks sealed in the fridgetub
• Yogurtkeeps 1 week sealed in the fridge

Products the USDA rates in the same places

This is a common shape of record: 16 of the 466 products are rated in the same places, refrigerator after opening, and 8 of the nine slots are left blank on all of them. Sorted by how close their windows are to this one, the nearest are Juice, Soy or rice beverage and Soy milk, and the rest of that group is what the list below draws on. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does. The longest-keeping of them is Juice at 12 days.

• Juice8 days in the fridge once opened
• Soy or rice beverage7 days in the fridge once opened
• Soy milk7 days in the fridge once opened
• Almond milk7 days in the fridge once opened
• Rice milk7 days in the fridge once opened
• Pork roll7 days in the fridge once opened
• Retort pouches or boxes3 days in the fridge once opened
• Fruit, cut4 days in the fridge once opened

The rest of the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf together with 28 others, and 8 of them keep 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 Whipped cream, Coffee creamer and Eggs, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Dairy Products & Eggs the same product ranks 9 of 29. The middle of the shelf is Whipped topping, at 2 weeks.

• Whipped cream4 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Coffee creamer3 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Eggs5 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Buttermilk2 weeks1 week sealed in the fridge
• Cottage cheese2 weeks1 week in the fridge once opened
• Cream cheese2 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Dips2 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Whipped topping2 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 4 weeks, the Dairy Products & Eggs aisle gives 7 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Butter at 2 months against this one's 4 weeks; after it come Vegan Cheddar Cheese, String Cheese and Margarine. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 18 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Buttermilk and Cottage cheese among them.

• Butter2 months1 month sealed in the fridge
• Vegan Cheddar Cheese4 months3 days in the fridge once opened
• String Cheese5 months5 months sealed in the fridge
• Margarine6 months6 months sealed in the fridge
• Nacho cheese2 years2 weeks in the fridge once opened
• Ghee2 years1 year in the fridge
• 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 620 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 1 of the nine storage slots with a time, and the binding figure on it is printed by the source in weeks, which is the unit this page keeps rather than converting it to days. 1 slot is answered in words instead of days, and printed as the source wrote it.

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, pimento, pimento cheese

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.