How long doTortillaslast in the fridge once opened?
The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately
Tortillas, corn keeps 25 days, which is shorter than the window this page answers with. The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — flour and corn — and gives every one of them the same window outside the freezer, 3 months. They are separate rows in the source rather than separate answers to the question.
The freezer helps less here than you would expect
The freezer buys less here than its reputation suggests: 2 times what the opened fridge gives, 3 months against 6 months, both still measured in months. For this item freezing is an extension rather than a different way of keeping it.
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. The source also indexes it as corn.
Tortillas, flour
- In the freezer6 months
- Unopened · in the pantry3 months
- Once opened · in the fridge3 months
Tortillas, corn
- Unopened · in the pantry25 days to 45 days
- Unopened · in the fridge60 days to 90 days
Turning the range into a date
Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 5 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.
Tortillas, flour
- In the freezerUse by6 months after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by3 months after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by3 months after the day you opened it
Tortillas, corn
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by25 days to 45 days after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by60 days to 90 days after the day you bought it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
The answer at the top of this page reads 3 months in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Tortillas, flour is acid, dry, sweet, alcoholic or pure fat. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.
The figure in the fridge here is not settled by this record. 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 Tortillas, flour past its 3 months in the fridge 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 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.
Two places, and one of them is the wrong one
The USDA rates two places for Tortillas, corn in one state and they disagree: 60 days to 90 days in the fridge against 25 days to 45 days in the pantry. Of the two, the refrigerator is the longer. Both figures are the USDA's own, so this is a choice of where to put the food rather than a disagreement about how long it keeps.
Is that a long time?
Among the 23 items the USDA files under Grains, Beans & Pasta, Tortillas, flour ranks 19 by how long it keeps outside the freezer. Teff holds 4 months, Buckwheat holds 2 months. Among the 340 foods the USDA also gives a refrigerator figure, it keeps longer than 77% of them.
Items that behave the same way
The 6 items below are the closest match to Tortillas, flour by storage behavior, running 2 days to 1 year and bracketing its 3 months.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
Only 1 other product in the whole file carries the same set of rated places as this one, freezer from the day of purchase, pantry from the day of purchase, refrigerator from the day of purchase and refrigerator after opening: Peanuts. That is 1 product 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 1 shown, 1 keeps longer than this one.
- Peanuts12 months sealed in the fridgeno shell
Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.
- Rice1 year in the pantry once openedwhite or wild · up to 2 years sealed in the pantry
- Refried beans2 days in the fridge once openedup to 3 years sealed in the pantry
- Lentils1 year in the pantry once opened
- Peas1 year in the pantry once opened
- Beans1 year in the pantry once opened
- Pasta1 year in the pantry once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry
- 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 18 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 Amaranth, Buckwheat and Millet, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Grains, Beans & Pasta the same product ranks 19 of 23. The middle of the shelf is Farro, at 6 months. The freezer is left out of the order on purpose: it flattens almost everything it touches.
- Amaranth4 months4 months in the pantry
- Buckwheat2 months2 months in the pantry
- Millet2 months2 months in the pantry
- Oats4 months4 months in the pantry
- Sorghum4 months4 months in the pantry
- Teff4 months4 months in the pantry
- Whole wheat bread5 days3 days in the pantry
- Fresh pasta2 days1 day in the fridge
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 3 months, the Grains, Beans & Pasta aisle gives 14 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Barley at 6 months against this one's 3 months; after it come Farro, Rye and Spelt. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 2 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Whole wheat bread and Fresh pasta among them.
- Barley6 months6 months in the pantry
- Farro6 months6 months in the pantry
- Rye6 months6 months in the pantry
- Spelt6 months6 months in the pantry
- Bulgur12 months6 months in the pantry
- Lentils1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
- Peas1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
- Mung bean1 year1 year in the fridge
The record this page is built from
The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 196 and 553 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 4 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Tortillas, flour, which is the kind the plain name means here, chosen kind by kind rather than by the order the source happens to list them in. The same record answers to corn in the source's own index.
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: corn, Tortilla
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.