How long doesChickenlast in the fridge?
The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately
The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — whole and pre-packaged, luncheon/deli meat — and they do not keep for the same time: Chicken, whole holds 1 day to 2 days outside the freezer, Chicken, pre-packaged, luncheon/deli meat holds 2 weeks.
Freezing changes the unit, not just the number
Here the freezer does not so much extend the answer as replace it. 2 days in the sealed fridge becomes 12 months in the freezer: 180 times longer, and days turning into months. The refrigerator from the day of purchase figure alone spans 1 day to 2 days, a factor of two.
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. The source also indexes it as whole, pre-packaged, luncheon meat and deli meat.
Chicken, whole
- In the freezer12 months
- Unopened · in the fridge1 day to 2 days
Chicken, pre-packaged, luncheon/deli meat
- In the freezer1 month to 2 months
- Unopened · in the fridge2 weeks
- Once opened · in the fridge3 days to 5 days
What the USDA adds in words
The USDA attaches 1 handling note to this item, reproduced below word for word. It is not a storage time: it qualifies the figure above rather than replacing it. These are the source's own sentences, not ours, and they are the part of the FoodKeeper record that a table of durations cannot carry.
Chicken, pre-packaged, luncheon/deli meat, in the freezer. Freezing not recommended.
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.
Chicken, whole
- In the freezerUse by12 months after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by1 day to 2 days after the day you bought it
Chicken, pre-packaged, luncheon/deli meat
- In the freezerUse by1 month to 2 months after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by2 weeks after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by3 days to 5 days after the day you opened it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
The answer at the top of this page reads 1 day to 2 days in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Chicken, whole 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.
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 Chicken, whole past its 1 day to 2 days 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?
14 items in the Poultry list keep exactly as long as Chicken, whole, 2 days, so they all share place 6 of 19 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 53% of them.
Items that behave the same way
All 4 of the 6 items nearest Chicken, whole keep exactly as long as it does, 2 days, so the ranking around it is a tie rather than an order.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
5 other products are rated in exactly these places — freezer from the day of purchase, refrigerator from the day of purchase and refrigerator after opening — out of the 466 in the file, so this is an uncommon shape of record. The nearest of them by keeping time are Turkey, Hot dogs and Turkey bacon. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. Of the 4 shown, 3 keep longer than this one.
- Turkey1 day sealed in the fridgewhole
- Hot dogs1 week in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Turkey bacon7 days in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Salami3 days in the fridge once openedup to 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Cheese5 kinds1 week to 12 months
Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.
- Ground turkey or chicken1 day sealed in the fridge
- Chicken parts1 day sealed in the fridgebreast halves, bone-in
- Turkey parts1 day sealed in the fridgebreast halves, bone-in
The rest of the Fresh shelf
Nothing else on the Fresh shelf keeps longer outside the freezer than this one. The other 11 products there run down from Turkey at 2 days to Giblets at 2 days, and the ones nearest this product by window are Turkey, Ground turkey or chicken and Chicken parts. That makes this page the top of its own shelf rather than a middle entry. The order counts the longest window outside the freezer, so Chicken, whole sits here at 2 days rather than at the 1 day sealed in the fridge its own answer prints.
- Turkey2 days1 day sealed in the fridge
- Ground turkey or chicken2 days1 day sealed in the fridge
- Chicken parts2 days1 day sealed in the fridge
- Turkey parts2 days1 day sealed in the fridge
- Duckling2 days1 day sealed in the fridge
- Goose2 days1 day sealed in the fridge
- Pheasant2 days1 day sealed in the fridge
- Quail2 days1 day sealed in the fridge
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 2 days, the Poultry aisle gives 5 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Cooked poultry dishes at 4 days against this one's 2 days; after it come Fried chicken, Rotisserie chicken and Turkey bacon. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. The largest step the category offers is Canned chicken at 5 years. Freezing this one instead would reach 12 months, which the comparison above leaves out on purpose.
- Cooked poultry dishes4 days3 days in the fridge
- Fried chicken4 days3 days in the fridge
- Rotisserie chicken4 days3 days sealed in the fridge
- Turkey bacon2 weeks7 days in the fridge once opened
- Canned chicken5 years3 days in the fridge once opened
The record this page is built from
The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 113 and 517 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 3 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Chicken, whole, 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 record carries 1 handling note, quoted on this page word for word.
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: deli meat, luncheon meat, packaged, pre-packaged, whole
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.