How long doDry gravy mixeslast in the fridge?
Built to sit on a shelf
This item is built to sit. It keeps 2 years outside the freezer. Nothing the USDA puts in the refrigerator keeps a shorter time, and 32 of those entries share this same figure. It is long enough that the date it went into storage matters more than anything you can judge by looking at it.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The USDA gives this item a pantry and a refrigerator figure and no freezer figure at all, the pattern behind 79 of the 466 foods in the data.
- Unopened · in the pantry2 years
- In the fridge1 day to 2 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.
In the refrigerator. Refrigeration time applies to prepared product.
Turning the range into a date
Counting 2 years forward from a date is not arithmetic anyone does reliably in their head. Give the field the day it went into storage.
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by2 years after the day you bought it
- In the fridgeUse by1 day to 2 days after the day you stored 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 record's own note: this figure is for the product after cooking, which is cooked and still moist. 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 pantry 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. 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 Dry gravy mixes 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. 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?
7 items in the Condiments, Sauces & Canned Goods list keep exactly as long as this item, 2 years, so they all share place 6 of 41 rather than being put in an order the data does not support.
Items that behave the same way
All 4 of the 6 items nearest this item keep exactly as long as it does, 2 years, so the ranking around it is a tie rather than an order.
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, pantry from the day of purchase and refrigerator: Re-hydrated textured soy protein. 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 ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does. The longest-keeping of them is Re-hydrated textured soy protein at 4 months.
- Re-hydrated textured soy protein3 days in the fridgeup to 4 months sealed in the pantry
Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.
- Cranberry sauce1 week in the fridge once openedcanned · up to 2 years sealed in the pantry
- Salsa1 month in the fridge once openedpicante and taco sauces · up to 1 year sealed in the pantry
- Salad dressing3 weeks in the fridge once openedcreamy · up to 6 months sealed in the pantry
- Honey2 years sealed in the pantry
- Mustard1 year in the fridge once opened
- Sauce mixes2 years sealed in the pantry
- Vinegar2 years sealed in the pantry
The rest of the Condiments, Sauces & Canned Goods shelf
The USDA puts this product on the Condiments, Sauces & Canned Goods shelf together with 40 others, and 5 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Gravy at 5 years down to Aioli at 4 days. Nearest this product by window are Honey, Mustard and Sauce mixes, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Condiments, Sauces & Canned Goods the same product ranks 6 of 41. The middle of the shelf is Pickles, at 1 year.
- Honey2 years2 years sealed in the pantry
- Mustard2 years1 year in the fridge once opened
- Sauce mixes2 years2 years sealed in the pantry
- Vinegar2 years2 years sealed in the pantry
- Thai red curry paste2 years5 days in the fridge once opened
- Cranberry sauce2 years1 week in the fridge once opened
- Black bean sauce24 months3 months in the fridge once opened
- Oyster sauce24 months3 months in the fridge once opened
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 2 years, Condiments, Sauces & Canned Goods offers 3 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The nearest step up is Gravy at 5 years against this one's 2 years, and the rest are Balsamic vinegar and Anchovies. A short list like this one is itself the finding: the category has few longer options. In the other direction, 24 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Barbecue sauce and Chutney among them.
- Gravy5 years1 day in the fridge once opened
- Balsamic vinegar5 years18 months in the fridge once opened
- Anchovies5 years3 days in the fridge once opened
The record this page is built from
This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 343 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 2 of the nine storage slots with a time, and the binding figure on it is printed by the source in years, which is the unit this page keeps rather than converting it to days. The record carries 1 handling note, quoted on this page word for word. Every figure here comes from one fixed snapshot, USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026, and is not refreshed page by page.
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: dry, gravy, mix, mixes
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.