How long doesRicelast in the pantry once opened?

The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately

Rice, brown keeps 6 months, which is shorter than the window this page answers with. The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — white or wild and brown — and they do not keep for the same time: Rice, brown holds 1 year outside the freezer, Rice, white or wild holds 2 years.

Sealed against opened

Opening the package costs 2 times here: 2 years sealed in the pantry against 1 year open in the pantry. That is a real difference and worth dating the container for, but not the collapse it becomes for the more perishable items in the same list.

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. The source also indexes it as white, wild and brown.

Rice, white or wild

• Unopened · in the pantry2 years
• Once opened · in the pantry1 year
• Once opened · in the fridge6 months

Rice, brown

• Unopened · in the pantry1 year
• Once opened · in the pantry1 year
• Once opened · in the fridge6 months

Turning the range into a date

Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 6 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Rice, white or wild

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by2 years after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the pantryUse by1 year after the day you opened it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by6 months after the day you opened it

Rice, brown

• Unopened · in the pantryUse by1 year after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the pantryUse by1 year after the day you opened it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by6 months after the day you opened it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 1 year in the pantry once opened. The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying Rice, white or wild keeps there, so the figure rates how good it will be. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.

The figure in the fridge once opened here is not settled by this record. 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 Rice, white or wild past its 1 year in the pantry once opened window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Insects or webbing in the package, a musty or rancid smell, or clumping that says damp got in mean it goes out whatever the date says.

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.

Two places, and one of them is the wrong one

The USDA rates two places for Rice, white or wild in one state and they disagree: 1 year in the pantry once opened against 6 months in the fridge once opened. This page answers with the pantry, 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?

4 items in the Grains, Beans & Pasta list keep exactly as long as Rice, white or wild, 2 years, so they all share place 3 of 23 rather than being put in an order the data does not support.

Items that behave the same way

The 6 items below are the closest match to Rice, white or wild by storage behavior, running 12 months to 3 years and bracketing its 2 years.

• Pasta, dry, without eggskeeps exactly as long
• Lentils, driedkeeps 1 year in the pantry once opened
• Quinoakeeps 2 years sealed in the pantryuncooked
• Refried beanskeeps 2 days in the fridge once openedup to 3 years sealed in the pantry
• Mung beankeeps 1 year in the fridgedry, food-grade bags
• Bulgurkeeps 6 months in the pantry

Products the USDA rates in the same places

8 other products are rated in exactly these places — pantry from the day of purchase, pantry after opening and refrigerator after opening — out of the 466 in the file, so this is an uncommon shape of record. The nearest of them by keeping time are Cornmeal, Sun dried tomatoes and Flour. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does.

• Cornmeal6 months sealed in the pantryregular, degerminated · up to 2 years in the pantry once opened
• Sun dried tomatoes3 months in the fridge once openedup to 1 year sealed in the pantry
• Flour6 months in the pantry once openedwhite
• Oils3 months in the pantry once openedup to 12 months sealed in the pantry
• Nut oils6 months in the fridge once opened
• Tamarind paste6 months in the pantry once opened
• Fruits, dried6 months in the fridge once opened
• Fruit Juice in cartons8 days in the fridge once openedup to 3 weeks sealed in the pantry

The rest of the Grains, Beans & Pasta shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Grains, Beans & Pasta shelf together with 22 others, and 2 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Quinoa at 3 years down to Fresh pasta at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Beans, Pasta and Dry egg noodles, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Grains, Beans & Pasta the same product ranks 3 of 23. The middle of the shelf is Rye, at 6 months.

• 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
• Lentils1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
• Peas1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
• Quinoa3 years2 years sealed in the pantry
• Refried beans3 years2 days in the fridge 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

The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 338 and 339 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 3 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Rice, white or wild, which is the kind the plain name means here, chosen kind by kind rather than by the order the source happens to list them in. The same record answers to white, wild and brown in the source's own index.

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: brown, white, wild

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.