About the Food Storage Guide
“How long do eggs last?” is one of the most-asked kitchen questions on the internet, and the canonical answer set already exists: the USDA FSIS FoodKeeper dataset, built with Cornell and the FMI. We bundled it whole — 647 foods, values unmodified, data version stamped — behind a search box that matches the way people actually type (“hamburger” finds ground beef).
The guide also says what the numbers mean: fridge windows for perishables are the real safety horizon; pantry and freezer windows are mostly quality; the 2-hour rule overrides everything; and frozen-at-0°F food is safe indefinitely — it just stops being delicious.
Pick a food above (tap a result to select it), tell us when you bought or opened it, and get dates instead of arithmetic.
Star foods in the results (★) to build the chart of what YOUR kitchen buys, then print it for the fridge door.
How to Use the Food Storage Guide
Type the food. Results appear as you type, matched against USDA’s names, subtitles and keyword lists — so “hamburger” finds ground beef and “pop” finds soda. Each card shows the windows the USDA publishes for that food: pantry, refrigerator and freezer, with opened/unopened and from-purchase variants where they exist, labelled exactly as the dataset labels them.
The Numbers Worth Memorising
A handful of windows cover most kitchen doubt: cooked leftovers, 3–4 days refrigerated. Raw poultry and ground meats, 1–2 days. Raw steaks and roasts, 3–5 days. Shell eggs, 3–5 weeks. Deli meat, 3–5 days once opened. Everything else — the sauces, the grains, the mystery jar — is what the search box is for.
Quality Windows vs Safety Windows
The same table encodes two different kinds of truth. For shelf-stable food, windows describe quality: crackers past date go stale, not dangerous. For perishables above 40°F, time is safety, and the 2-hour rule is absolute. The freezer converts safety problems into quality problems — which is why “freeze it today if you won’t cook it tomorrow” is the single most useful habit this dataset teaches.
Related tools: the Turkey Timeline Planner (whose leftovers panel uses these same windows), the Produce Seasonality Finder for buying at the right moment, and the Temperature Converter for the 0°F and 40°F lines themselves. Browse every Cooking & Kitchen tool for more.
Data: USDA FSIS FoodKeeper (version 128), extracted 2026-09-08 with values unmodified; windows assume proper storage (fridge ≤40°F, freezer 0°F). Guidance, not a guarantee — when something looks, smells or feels wrong, the table loses the argument. High-risk groups (pregnant, immunocompromised, elderly, infants) should lean conservative.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do these storage times come from?
The USDA FSIS FoodKeeper dataset — the data behind the government's own FoodKeeper app, built with Cornell University and the Food Marketing Institute. We extracted the official published JSON (data version 128) and bundled it unmodified: 647 foods with their pantry, refrigerator and freezer windows, including the opened/unopened and after-purchase variants. The source and version are stamped in the data file, and the entry for eggs (3–5 weeks refrigerated) cross-checks against USDA's separate Cold Food Storage Chart.
Are these dates safety deadlines?
They are quality-and-safety guidance of two different kinds, and the tool labels which. Refrigerator windows for perishables (meat, poultry, cut produce, leftovers) are the real food-safety horizon — bacteria grow even at 40°F, just slowly. Pantry and freezer windows are mostly QUALITY: a can past its window is usually safe but declining; food kept frozen at 0°F is safe essentially forever, it just dries out and dulls. The one hard safety rule that overrides every window: perishables left out over 2 hours (1 hour above 90°F) get discarded, not sniffed.
What about "best by" and "use by" dates on packages?
With the exception of infant formula, date labels on US food are manufacturer quality estimates, not federally regulated safety dates — "best if used by" means peak quality, "sell by" is stock rotation. That is why a searchable table of how foods actually keep is more useful than the printed date: milk routinely outlives its label by days when kept cold; deli salads do not. When a label and this table disagree, use the shorter one and your senses.
Why do eggs last so much longer than the carton implies?
USDA's window for shell eggs is 3–5 weeks refrigerated — from purchase, not from the carton date. US eggs are washed, which removes the natural coating and mandates refrigeration, but cold eggs genuinely keep. The float test (an egg standing upright in water is old, floating is bad) tracks the air cell growing as moisture leaves — a decent freshness proxy, not a safety guarantee. Raw yolks and whites out of the shell are different animals: 2–4 days.
The power went out — what survives?
USDA's rule: a full freezer holds safe temperature about 48 hours unopened (24 if half-full); the fridge protects perishables for about 4 hours unopened. After that, perishables in the fridge follow the 2-hour rule from the moment it passed 40°F. Anything still carrying ice crystals can be refrozen safely (quality may dip). The subscriber outage panel turns those rules into a timeline from the moment your power died.
