How long does food last in the fridge?

The times worth memorising

USDA cold storage guidance assumes a refrigerator at or below 40°F (4°C). Above that, every number below shortens, which is why the single most useful thing in this article is a fridge thermometer rather than a list.

Raw poultry, raw minced meat and raw sausage: 1 to 2 days. Raw steaks, chops and roasts: 3 to 5 days. Cooked meat, cooked poultry, soups, stews and most leftovers: 3 to 4 days. Raw eggs in the shell: 3 to 5 weeks. Hard cheeses keep for weeks; soft cheeses do not.

Those are quality-and-safety windows for food that was fresh when it went in. They do not reset because you moved something to a colder shelf, and they do not extend because the food still smells fine.

Produce is the category with no single answer

Fresh produce spans an enormous range. Berries and fresh herbs are often done in three to five days. Broccoli, peppers and courgettes tend to hold about a week. Carrots, cabbage and beetroot will go two weeks or more.

This spread is exactly why produce dominates household waste. A shopping trip that treats all vegetables as one category, bought on the same day for a week of unspecified meals, guarantees that the fast half spoils while the slow half survives.

The practical version: cook the berries, herbs and salad leaves in the first two or three days after shopping, and let the roots and brassicas carry the back half of the week.

The 2-hour rule matters more than the day count

USDA guidance is that perishable food should not sit at room temperature for more than two hours, dropping to one hour when it is above 90°F (32°C). Food left out past that has to be discarded regardless of how many days remain on its fridge window.

This catches people out with leftovers more than with anything else. A pan left on the hob to cool through the evening has already spent its budget before it reaches the fridge, and the 3-to-4-day leftover window never properly starts.

The fridge is usually not the problem

A fridge running at the right temperature will hold food for the windows above without complaint. When something gets thrown away, the cause is almost never that the refrigerator underperformed. It is that nothing in the week was ever going to use the item before its window closed.

Storage times are worth knowing because they tell you which order to cook things in. They do not tell you whether you should have bought the item, and that is the decision doing most of the damage.

Common questions

How long do leftovers last in the fridge?

USDA cold storage guidance puts cooked leftovers, including cooked meat, soups and stews, at 3 to 4 days in a refrigerator at or below 40°F (4°C).

What temperature should my fridge be?

At or below 40°F (4°C). Every USDA storage time assumes that temperature, so a fridge running warmer shortens all of them.

Can I trust the smell test?

Not on its own. The bacteria that cause foodborne illness do not reliably change how food smells, looks or tastes, which is why USDA guidance is built on times and temperatures rather than on judgement.