How long doesPuddinglast in the fridge once opened?

Why the freezer is not an option here

The USDA marks the freezer as not recommended for this item, so the whole answer is a single field: 2 days in the refrigerator after opening. The source prints that verdict without a reason, and a reason we made up would be ours rather than theirs. It is not a warning: food held at 0 °F stays safe, so a not-recommended is a verdict on what would come out of the freezer.

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.

• In the freezernot recommended
• In the fridgePackage use-by date
• Once opened · in the fridge2 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.

Turning the range into a date

Two clocks run on this item: one from the day it went into storage and one from the day the seal broke. Both are listed below, 1 row in all.

• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by2 days after the day you opened it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 2 days in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food: the source files Pudding 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.

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 Pudding past its 2 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. 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?

This item is the shortest-lived thing the USDA files under Dairy Products & Eggs: 2 days, where the item above it, Egg substitutes, holds 4 days and the middle of the 29-item list sits at 2 weeks. 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

All 6 of the nearest items keep at least as long as this item, 4 days to 10 days against its 2 days: it is the bottom of its own cluster.

• Egg disheskeeps 3 days in the fridge
• Egg substituteskeeps 3 days in the fridge
• Eggnog, commercialkeeps 3 days sealed in the fridge
• Kefir, fermented milkkeeps 1 day in the fridge once openedup to 1 week sealed in the fridge
• Soy milkkeeps 7 days in the fridge once opened
• Coconut milkkeeps 7 days in the fridge once opened

Products the USDA rates in the same places

This is a common shape of record: 16 of the 466 products are rated in the same places, refrigerator after opening, and 8 of the nine slots are left blank on all of them. Sorted by how close their windows are to this one, the nearest are Chiffon pies, Dinners and Liquid concentrate or ready-to-feed formula, and the rest of that group is what the list below draws on. Of the 8 shown, 5 keep longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Retort pouches or boxes at 4 days.

• Chiffon pies1 day in the fridge once opened
• Dinners2 days in the fridge once opened
• Liquid concentrate or ready-to-feed formula2 days in the fridge once opened
• Jars or pouches2 days in the fridge once opened
• Fruit3 days in the fridge once opened
• Soda2 days in the fridge once opened
• Retort pouches or boxes3 days in the fridge once opened
• Fruit, cut4 days in the fridge once opened

The rest of the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf

Every one of the other 28 products on the Dairy Products & Eggs shelf keeps longer outside the freezer than this one, from Powdered milk at 5 years down to Egg substitutes at 4 days. The closest of them by window are Egg dishes, Egg substitutes and Eggnog, and the gap between this product and the rest of its shelf is the thing worth noticing here. Across the whole of Dairy Products & Eggs the same product ranks 29 of 29. The middle of the shelf is Dips, at 2 weeks.

• Egg dishes4 days3 days in the fridge
• Egg substitutes4 days3 days in the fridge
• Eggnog5 days3 days sealed in the fridge
• Kefir1 week1 day in the fridge once opened
• 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
• Coconut milk10 days7 days in the fridge once opened

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 2 days, the Dairy Products & Eggs aisle gives 28 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Egg dishes at 4 days against this one's 2 days; after it come Egg substitutes, Eggnog and Kefir. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. The largest step the category offers is Powdered milk at 5 years. Twice as long is the cutoff used here, so a product a few days apart from this one is not treated as a step.

• Egg dishes4 days3 days in the fridge
• Egg substitutes4 days3 days in the fridge
• Eggnog5 days3 days sealed in the fridge
• Kefir1 week1 day in the fridge once opened
• 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
• Coconut milk10 days7 days in the fridge once opened

The record this page is built from

This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 28 — 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 source prints its binding figure in days, so the window at the top of this page is the source's own number untouched. 1 slot is marked not recommended, which is an answer rather than a gap. 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.

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.