How long doesKimchilast in the fridge?
The methods the USDA actually rates for this item
The USDA rates only 1 of its nine storage methods for this item, and the refrigerator from the day of purchase is what it rates. The other 8 slots are blank, and a blank is not a zero: it means no published figure, not that the method fails.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
The refrigerator is the only place the USDA gives this item a storage time, as it does for 64 of the 466 foods the USDA lists. Within Produce it is filed under Fresh Vegetables.
- Unopened · in the fridge6 months to 12 months
Turning the range into a date
Counting 12 months 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 fridgeUse by6 months to 12 months after the day you bought it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
The answer at the top of this page reads 6 months to 12 months in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Kimchi is acid, dry, sweet, alcoholic or pure fat. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.
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 Kimchi past its 6 months to 12 months in the fridge window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Mold, a slimy or sticky surface, soft or darkened spots, or a sour smell mean it goes out whatever the date 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?
2 items in the Produce list keep exactly as long as this item, 12 months, so they all share place 2 of 89 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 92% of them.
Items that behave the same way
The 6 items below are the closest match to this item by storage behavior, running 3 months to 1 year and bracketing its 12 months.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
14 other products are rated in exactly these places — refrigerator from the day of purchase — out of the 466 in the file, so this is an uncommon shape of record. The nearest of them by keeping time are Miso, Herring and String Cheese. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. Of the 8 shown, 1 keeps longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Miso at 1 year. Counted more loosely, by which of the three places are rated at all, 64 products match this one.
- Miso1 year sealed in the fridge
- Herring4 months sealed in the fridge
- String Cheese5 months sealed in the fridge
- Whipped cream3 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Cream cheese2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Dips2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Commercial brand vacuum-packed dinners2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Lettuce1 week sealed in the fridgeiceberg, romaine
The rest of the Fresh Vegetables shelf
Nothing else on the Fresh Vegetables shelf keeps longer outside the freezer than this one. The other 58 products there run down from Tamarind at 6 months to Corn on the cob at 2 days, and the ones nearest this product by window are Tamarind, Pumpkins and Jicama. 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 this item sits here at 12 months rather than at the 6 months sealed in the fridge its own answer prints.
- Tamarind6 months6 months sealed in the fridge
- Pumpkins5 months3 months sealed in the fridge
- Jicama4 months4 months sealed in the pantry
- Onions2 months2 months sealed in the fridge
- Potatoes2 months1 month sealed in the pantry
- Spaghetti squash2 months2 months in the pantry
- Baby carrots4 weeks4 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Carrots3 weeks2 weeks sealed in the fridge
If it has to keep longer than this
Nothing the USDA files under Produce keeps at least twice as long as this one outside the freezer. It runs the other way: 86 entries in the category keep half as long or less, among them Tamarind, Pumpkins and Jicama. So the question this page answers is not what to buy instead, but what this product outlasts on the same shelf, and by how much. Twice as long is the cutoff used here, so a product a few days apart from this one is not treated as a step.
- Tamarind6 months6 months sealed in the fridge
- Pumpkins5 months3 months sealed in the fridge
- Jicama4 months4 months sealed in the pantry
- Pomegranate3 months1 month sealed in the fridge
- Cranberries2 months2 months sealed in the fridge
- Onions2 months2 months sealed in the fridge
- Potatoes2 months1 month sealed in the pantry
- Spaghetti squash2 months2 months in the pantry
The record this page is built from
This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 493 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 1 of the nine storage slots with a time, and the binding figure on it is printed by the source in months, which is the unit this page keeps rather than converting it to days. It is filed under Fresh Vegetables inside Produce, 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.
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.