How long doesFatty fishlast in the fridge?
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 3 months in the freezer: 45 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 blue and cat.
- In the freezer2 months to 3 months
- Unopened · in the fridge1 day to 2 days
Turning the range into a date
The window here is 2 days, short enough that the day it went in is worth writing down. The field for this one is at the top of the page, above the answer it changes.
- In the freezerUse by2 months to 3 months after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by1 day to 2 days after the day you bought 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: it 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 it 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?
3 items in the Seafood list keep exactly as long as this item, 2 days, so they all share place 14 of 17 rather than being put in an order the data does not support. Nothing the USDA puts in the refrigerator keeps a shorter time, and 32 of those entries share this same figure.
Items that behave the same way
The 6 items below are the closest match to this item by storage behavior, running 1 day to 4 days and bracketing its 2 days.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
This is a common shape of record: 52 of the 466 products are rated in the same places, freezer from the day of purchase and refrigerator from the day of purchase, and 7 of the nine slots are left blank on all of them. Sorted by how close their windows are to this one, the nearest are Variety meats, Sausage and Stuffed, raw pork chops, and the rest of that group is what the list below draws on. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does.
- Variety meats1 day sealed in the fridge
- Sausage1 day sealed in the fridgeraw bulk type or patties
- Stuffed, raw pork chops1 day sealed in the fridge
- Raw kabobs with vegetables1 day sealed in the fridge
- 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
- Duckling1 day sealed in the fridge
The rest of the Fresh shelf
Fresh is a short shelf: 3 products besides this one. They run from Caviar at 4 weeks down to Lean fish at 2 days, and this product sits with 2 products above it. A shelf this small is worth reading whole, which is why every one of them is printed below rather than a sample. The order counts the longest window outside the freezer, so this item sits here at 2 days rather than at the 1 day sealed in the fridge its own answer prints.
- Lean fish2 days1 day sealed in the fridge
- Cooked fish4 days3 days in the fridge
- Caviar4 weeks2 days in the fridge once opened
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 2 days, the Seafood aisle gives 8 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Cooked fish at 4 days against this one's 2 days; after it come Crab legs, Cooked shellfish and Fish. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 1 entry in the category keeps half as long or less, Fresh whole lobster among them. The largest step the category offers is Herring at 6 months.
- Cooked fish4 days3 days in the fridge
- Crab legs4 days2 days sealed in the fridge
- Cooked shellfish4 days3 days in the fridge
- Fish4 days3 days in the fridge
- Shucked clams10 days3 days sealed in the fridge
- Fresh clams10 days5 days sealed in the fridge
- Caviar4 weeks2 days in the fridge once opened
- Herring6 months4 months sealed in the fridge
The record this page is built from
This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 146 — 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 source prints its binding figure in days, so the window at the top of this page is the source's own number untouched. The same record answers to blue and cat in the source's own index. It is filed under Fresh inside Seafood, which is where every shelf comparison on this page comes from.
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: blue, bluefish, cat, catfish, fatty, Fatty fish, fish, mackerel, mullet, salmon, tuna
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.