How long doPine nutslast in the fridge?

The freezer helps less here than you would expect

The freezer buys less here than its reputation suggests: 3 times what the refrigerator gives, 3 months against 9 months, both still measured in months. For this item freezing is an extension rather than a different way of keeping it.

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.

• In the freezer9 months
• In the pantry2 weeks to 3 weeks
• In the fridge3 months

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 freezer. Store in a plastic bag within an airtight container.

Turning the range into a date

Counting 3 months forward from a date is not arithmetic anyone does reliably in their head. Give the field the day it went into storage.

• In the freezerUse by9 months after the day you stored it
• In the pantryUse by2 weeks to 3 weeks after the day you stored it
• In the fridgeUse by3 months after the day you stored it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 3 months in the fridge. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Pine nuts 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.

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 Pine nuts past its 3 months in the fridge window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. A rancid, paint-like smell in a nut, an oil or a seed, mold around the neck of a bottle, or a swollen can 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.

Two places, and one of them is the wrong one

The USDA rates two places for Pine nuts in one state and they disagree: 3 months in the fridge against 2 weeks to 3 weeks in the pantry. This page answers with the refrigerator, the longer of the two. Both figures are the USDA's own, so this is a choice of where to put the food rather than a disagreement about how long it keeps.

Is that a long time?

2 items in the Shelf Stable Foods list keep exactly as long as this item, 3 months, so they all share place 65 of 70 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 77% of them.

Items that behave the same way

The 6 items below are the closest match to this item by storage behavior, running 7 days to 5 months and bracketing its 3 months.

• Cashew butterkeeps exactly as long
• Potato chipskeeps 1 week in the pantry once openedup to 2 months sealed in the pantry
• Marshmallow crèmekeeps 1 month in the pantry once openedup to 5 months sealed in the pantry
• Pectinkeeps 1 month in the pantry once opened
• Roasted nuts (peanuts, cashews, almonds)keeps 4 weeks in the fridge once opened
• Polentakeeps 5 days in the fridge once openedshelf-stable

Products the USDA rates in the same places

Only 3 other products in the whole file carry the same set of rated places as this one, freezer, pantry and refrigerator: Croutons, Mung bean and Whole wheat flour. That is 3 products 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 3 shown, 3 keep longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Whole wheat flour at 2 years.

• Croutons5 months in the fridge
• Mung bean1 year in the fridgedry, food-grade bags
• Whole wheat flour2 years in the fridge

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

• Pumpkin seeds6 months in the fridgeraw, no shell
• Pecans9 months sealed in the fridgeno shell
• Applesauce7 days in the fridge once openedcommercial · up to 18 months sealed in the pantry
• "Genuine" Maple syrup2 years in the pantryunopened, plastic
• Cashew butter3 months in the pantry

The rest of the Shelf Stable Foods shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Shelf Stable Foods shelf together with 69 others, and 64 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Coconut cream at 5 years down to Polenta at 7 days. Nearest this product by window are Cashew butter, Potato chips and Pork rinds, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Shelf Stable Foods the same product ranks 65 of 70. The middle of the shelf is Sunflower oil, at 1 year.

• Cashew butter3 months3 months in the pantry
• Potato chips2 months1 week in the pantry once opened
• Pork rinds4 months4 months in the pantry
• Marshmallow crème5 months1 month in the pantry once opened
• Pectin1 month1 month in the pantry once opened
• Roasted nuts4 weeks4 weeks in the fridge once opened
• Polenta7 days5 days in the fridge once opened
• Fruits, dried6 months6 months in the fridge once opened

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 3 months, the Shelf Stable Foods aisle gives 62 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Fruits, dried at 6 months against this one's 3 months; after it come Cashews, Roasted red peppers and Pumpkin seeds. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 3 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Pectin and Roasted nuts among them.

• Fruits, dried6 months6 months in the fridge once opened
• Cashews6 months6 months sealed in the fridge
• Roasted red peppers6 months4 months in the fridge
• Pumpkin seeds6 months6 months in the fridge
• Breadcrumbs6 months6 months in the pantry
• Instant breakfast drinks6 months6 months in the pantry
• Croutons6 months5 months in the fridge
• Crackers8 months3 months in the fridge once opened

The record this page is built from

This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 653 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 3 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. 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: nut, nuts, pine, pine nut

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.