How long doRefried beanslast in the fridge once opened?

What opening the package actually costs

Opening the package is the decision that settles this page. Sealed, the item holds 3 years sealed in the pantry; once open it holds 3 days open in the fridge, the same food measured in days instead of years, a drop of 365 times.

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 pantry3 years
• Once opened · in the fridge2 days to 3 days

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, 2 rows in all.

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by3 years after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by2 days to 3 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 to 3 days in the fridge once opened. What decides that is the food and not the shelf the source files it on: Refried beans is cooked or ready to eat 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 Refried beans past its 2 days to 3 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?

2 items in the Grains, Beans & Pasta list keep exactly as long as this item, 3 years, so they all share place 1 of 23 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 10% of them.

Items that behave the same way

Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 12 months to 3 years against the 3 years of this item, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.

• Quinoakeeps exactly as long
• Pasta, dry, without eggskeeps 1 year in the pantry once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry
• Ricekeeps 1 year in the pantry once openedwhite or wild · up to 2 years sealed in the pantry
• Lentils, driedkeeps 1 year in the pantry once opened
• Mung beankeeps 1 year in the fridgedry, food-grade bags
• Bulgurkeeps 6 months in the pantry

Products the USDA rates in the same places

This is a common shape of record: 27 of the 466 products are rated in the same places, pantry from the day of purchase and refrigerator after opening, 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 Soy sauce or teriyaki sauce, Chocolate syrup and Thai red curry paste, and the rest of that group is what the list below draws on. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does.

• Soy sauce or teriyaki sauce1 month in the fridge once openedup to 3 years sealed in the pantry
• Chocolate syrup6 months in the fridge once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry
• Thai red curry paste5 days in the fridge once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry
• Black bean sauce3 months in the fridge once openedup to 24 months sealed in the pantry
• Oyster sauce3 months in the fridge once openedup to 24 months sealed in the pantry
• Hoisin sauce3 months in the fridge once openedup to 24 months sealed in the pantry
• Jams6 months in the fridge once opened
• Spaghetti sauce4 days in the fridge once openedup to 18 months sealed in the pantry

The rest of the Grains, Beans & Pasta shelf

Nothing else on the Grains, Beans & Pasta shelf keeps longer outside the freezer than this one. The other 22 products there run down from Quinoa at 3 years to Fresh pasta at 2 days, and the ones nearest this product by window are Quinoa, Beans and Pasta. That makes this page the top of its own shelf rather than a middle entry. Across the whole of Grains, Beans & Pasta the same product ranks 1 of 23. The middle of the shelf is Rye, at 6 months.

• Quinoa3 years2 years sealed in the pantry
• Beans2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
• Pasta2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
• Dry egg noodles2 years1 month in the pantry once opened
• Rice2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
• Lentils1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
• Peas1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
• Mung bean1 year1 year in the fridge

If it has to keep longer than this

Nothing the USDA files under Grains, Beans & Pasta keeps at least twice as long as this one outside the freezer. It runs the other way: 17 entries in the category keep half as long or less, among them Lentils, Peas and Mung bean. 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.

• Lentils1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
• Peas1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
• Mung bean1 year1 year in the fridge
• Bulgur12 months6 months in the pantry
• Barley6 months6 months in the pantry
• Farro6 months6 months in the pantry
• Rye6 months6 months in the pantry
• Spelt6 months6 months in the pantry

The record this page is built from

This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 499 — 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. 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: refried bean

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.