How long doesTofulast in the fridge?
Freezing changes the unit, not just the number
Freezing does not just add time to this item, it changes the unit the answer is written in: 1 week in the sealed fridge against 5 months in the freezer, 21 times longer, months in place of weeks.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The USDA rates this item cold or frozen and never at room temperature: no pantry figure exists for it, as for 222 of the 466 foods in the data that get no pantry time at all.
- In the freezer5 months
- Unopened · in the fridge1 week
Turning the range into a date
The window here is 1 week, short enough that the day it went in is worth writing down. The field for this one is at the top of the page, above the answer it changes.
- In the freezerUse by5 months after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by1 week after the day you bought it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
The answer at the top of this page reads 1 week in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Tofu is cooked or ready to eat and still moist. 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 figure in the freezer here is 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 Tofu past its 1 week 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. 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?
This item is the shortest-lived thing the USDA files under Vegetarian Proteins: 1 week, where the item above it, Re-hydrated textured soy protein, (TSP), holds 4 months and the middle of the 5-item list sits at 6 months.
Items that behave the same way
All 4 of the nearest items keep at least as long as this item, 4 months to 2 years against its 1 week: it is the bottom of its own cluster.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
This is a common shape of record: 52 of the 466 products are rated in the same places, freezer from the day of purchase and refrigerator from the day of purchase, 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 Corned beef, Eggnog and Venison, and the rest of that group is what the list below draws on. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does.
- Corned beef5 days sealed in the fridge
- Eggnog3 days sealed in the fridge
- Venison3 days sealed in the fridge
- Beans and peas3 days sealed in the fridge
- Broccoli and broccoli raab3 days sealed in the fridge
- Brussels sprouts3 days sealed in the fridge
- Cauliflower3 days sealed in the fridge
- Kale3 days sealed in the fridge
The rest of the Vegetarian Proteins shelf
Vegetarian Proteins is a short shelf: 4 products besides this one. They run from Textured soy protein at 2 years down to Re-hydrated textured soy protein at 4 months, and this product sits with 4 products above it. A shelf this small is worth reading whole, which is why every one of them is printed below rather than a sample. Across the whole of Vegetarian Proteins the same product ranks 5 of 5. The middle of the shelf is Soy flour, at 6 months. The freezer is left out of the order on purpose: it flattens almost everything it touches.
- Re-hydrated textured soy protein4 months3 days in the fridge
- Soy flour6 months6 months sealed in the fridge
- Miso1 year1 year sealed in the fridge
- Textured soy protein2 years3 months in the pantry once opened
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 1 week, Vegetarian Proteins offers 4 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The nearest step up is Re-hydrated textured soy protein at 4 months against this one's 1 week, and the rest are Soy flour, Miso and Textured soy protein. A short list like this one is itself the finding: the category has few longer options. The largest step the category offers is Textured soy protein at 2 years. Freezing this one instead would reach 5 months, which the comparison above leaves out on purpose.
- Re-hydrated textured soy protein4 months3 days in the fridge
- Soy flour6 months6 months sealed in the fridge
- Miso1 year1 year sealed in the fridge
- Textured soy protein2 years3 months in the pantry once opened
The record this page is built from
This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 168 — 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 weeks, 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.
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.