Food storage times

What it's for

Knowing how long food lasts helps you avoid throwing away good food and risking spoiled food. You get indicative times in the fridge and freezer.

Tip

These are rough guides with a 4°C fridge and -18°C freezer. Also trust your eyes and nose, and always respect the expiry date of packaged products.

The two numbers everything rests on

Fridge at 4 °C, freezer at −18 °C. They aren't symbolic values: between 4 and 60 degrees lies the band where bacteria multiply fast, and every extra degree in the fridge shortens the life of everything inside it. It's worth checking with a thermometer costing a few euros: a great many home fridges sit at 7-8 degrees, and in that case the times on this page have to be cut almost in half.

Inside the fridge the temperature isn't uniform: the bottom shelf, above the drawers, is the coldest and is the place for meat and fish; the door is the warmest and most variable spot, so it isn't the place for milk and eggs, however much of an egg holder is moulded into the plastic.

The freezer stops bacteria, it doesn't kill them

This is the thing people assume backwards. At −18 °C micro-organisms stop multiplying but stay alive: when the food thaws they start again from where they left off, which is why you thaw in the fridge and not on the kitchen counter, and why thawed raw food isn't refrozen raw.

The freezer burn — those grey, dry patches — is a quality problem, not a safety one: it's water evaporated from the surface. The food is still edible, it just has less flavour. It's avoided by getting the air out of the packaging, which is also why tightly wrapped meat lasts far longer than meat in an open tray.

«Use by» is not «best before»

They're two different phrases in law, and the difference matters. «Use by» is a safety date: it goes on fresh, perishable products, and after that date the product isn't eaten and isn't sold. «Best before» is a quality date: afterwards the product may lose flavour or texture, but it stays edible — it's what goes on pasta, rice, tins and biscuits, where throwing things out on the exact day is simply waste.

Nearby tools

For safe cooking of meat and poultry there is Meat temperatures, and for the quantities to prepare Servings per person. To find out what to replace a missing ingredient with Ingredient substitutions, and for the calories of what you're storing Food calories.