How long doesCoconut milklast in the fridge once opened?

The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately

Coconut milk, canned keeps 4 days, which is shorter than the window this page answers with. The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — USDA record 429 and canned — and they do not keep for the same time: Coconut milk holds 7 days to 10 days outside the freezer, Coconut milk, canned holds 2 years to 5 years.

A short window, and what shortens it further

Coconut milk is one of the short-lived entries in the data: 10 days outside the freezer, position 20 of 29 in the Dairy Products & Eggs list. At that scale a day of delay is a large share of the whole window, which is why the figure is printed as a range rather than an average.

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 canned and can.

Coconut milk

• In the fridgePackage use-by date
• Once opened · in the fridge7 days to 10 days

Coconut milk, canned

• In the freezer3 months
• Unopened · in the pantry2 years to 5 years
• Once opened · in the fridge4 days

Where the USDA answers in words instead of days

1 of the nine slots the USDA keeps for this item holds an answer that is not a number, and an answer in words is still an answer: in the fridge it answers with the package date rather than a number, and the use-by date printed on that particular package is the figure to go by.

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.

Coconut milk, in the refrigerator. Keep refrigerated.

Turning the range into a date

Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 4 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Coconut milk

• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by7 days to 10 days after the day you opened it

Coconut milk, canned

• In the freezerUse by3 months after the day you stored it
• Unopened · in the pantryUse by2 years to 5 years after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by4 days after the day you opened it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 7 days to 10 days in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food: the source files Coconut milk under Dairy Products & Eggs, a heading it keeps for perishable food. 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 figures in the freezer and in the pantry here are 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 Coconut milk past its 7 days to 10 days in the fridge once opened 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?

5 items in the Dairy Products & Eggs list keep exactly as long as Coconut milk, 10 days, so they all share place 20 of 29 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 48% of them.

Items that behave the same way

The 6 items below are the closest match to Coconut milk by storage behavior, running 1 week to 2 weeks and bracketing its 10 days.

• Soy milkkeeps exactly as long
• Quark, fresh cheesekeeps exactly as long
• Kefir, fermented milkkeeps 1 day in the fridge once openedup to 1 week sealed in the fridge
• Dips, sour cream basedkeeps 2 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Whipped toppingkeeps 2 weeks sealed in the fridgetub
• Yogurtkeeps 1 week sealed in the fridge

Products the USDA rates in the same places

4 other products are rated in exactly these places — freezer, pantry 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 Coconut, Yeast and Tomato paste. 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, 4 keep longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Coconut cream at 5 years.

• Coconut8 months in the fridge once openedup to 1 year sealed in the pantry
• Yeast4 months in the fridge once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry
• Tomato paste5 days in the fridge once openedup to 27 months sealed in the pantry
• Coconut cream4 days in the fridge once openedup to 5 years sealed in the pantry

Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.

• Nacho cheese2 weeks in the fridge once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry
• Soy milk7 days in the fridge once opened
• Almond milk7 days in the fridge once opened
• Rice milk7 days in the fridge once opened

The rest of the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf together with 28 others, and 19 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Powdered milk at 5 years down to Pudding at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Soy milk, Almond milk and Rice milk, which is the order the list below is printed in. The order counts the longest window outside the freezer, so Coconut milk sits here at 10 days rather than at the 7 days in the fridge once opened its own answer prints.

• Soy milk10 days7 days in the fridge once opened
• Almond milk10 days7 days in the fridge once opened
• Rice milk10 days7 days in the fridge once opened
• Quark10 days7 days in the fridge
• Kefir1 week1 day in the fridge once opened
• Buttermilk2 weeks1 week sealed in the fridge
• Cottage cheese2 weeks1 week in the fridge once opened
• Cream cheese2 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 10 days, the Dairy Products & Eggs aisle gives 11 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Coffee creamer at 3 weeks against this one's 10 days; after it come Whipped cream, Pimento cheese and Eggs. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 4 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Eggnog and Egg dishes among them.

• Coffee creamer3 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Whipped cream4 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Pimento cheese4 weeks4 weeks in the fridge once opened
• Eggs5 weeks3 weeks sealed in the fridge
• Butter2 months1 month sealed in the fridge
• Vegan Cheddar Cheese4 months3 days in the fridge once opened
• String Cheese5 months5 months sealed in the fridge
• Margarine6 months6 months sealed in the fridge

The record this page is built from

The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 429 and 602 — 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 Coconut milk, 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. 1 slot is answered in words instead of days, and printed as the source wrote it.

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: can, canned, coconut, milk

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.