It’s midweek, you’ve had a long day, and the last thing you want is a complicated dinner. You open the fridge and see that pack of chicken you picked up a few days ago. Or was it last week? Suddenly you’re wondering: how long has it been in there – and how long does chicken actually keep in the fridge?
Before you cook that chicken for dinner tonight, here’s what the experts say about poultry safety.
How long does raw chicken last?
‘Use fresh chicken within one to two days if you’re storing it in the fridge,’ says food safety expert Urvi Shah, PhD. As with beef, that’s generally the safe window for using it.
Raw chicken can be contaminated with campylobacter, salmonella, or clostridium perfringens, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And the worst part is, you can’t see any of it. The CDC estimates that about one million people in the United States get sick from eating contaminated poultry every year. And, perhaps more shockingly, the agency also estimates that one in 25 packages of chicken at the supermarket are contaminated with salmonella. That’s why handling and storing raw chicken safely aren’t just good habits; they may save you from a world of food poisoning pain.
Signs your chicken has gone bad
Colour isn’t always a reliable indicator with chicken. Jorge Thomas, chef and founder of Swaledale Butchers, explains that vacuum-packed chicken ‘can look and smell a bit odd at first without there being anything wrong with it’ and that the colour can look darker when first opened, then pinker once it’s exposed to air. A slight smell can also be normal and should clear within a few minutes.
‘What matters more is whether the smell lingers, whether the chicken feels slimy, or still looks dull and wrong after it has had a bit of air,’ Jorge adds. If any of those are true, it’s best to throw it away.
When to freeze instead
If you’re not going to cook the chicken within a day or two, freeze it while it’s still fresh. That way, you can confidently enjoy it down the line.
‘Freezing is absolutely a good idea if you’re not going to use it in time,’ Jorge says. Urvi backs him up, adding that there’s no harm in freezing your chicken ‘indefinitely’. She adds, ‘The quality may degrade when kept in the freezer for too long (11-12 months max)’, but if you properly package your chicken with airtight heavy-duty foil or plastic wrap, it will ‘prevent any grey-brown spots (freezer burn) during long-term storage in the freezer’.
Stacey Leasca is an award-winning journalist with two decades of newsroom experience. Her photos, videos, and words have appeared in National Geographic, Travel + Leisure, Time, Los Angeles Times, Food & Wine, Glamour, Men's Health, Afar, and many more. Stacey also served as an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Southern California teaching feature writing and visual journalism. She is also a Ph.D. Candidate with a specialty in building resiliency to misinformation.
