How long does bacon last in the fridge once opened?
Bacon lasts longer than almost anything else in the meat drawer, and that is the trouble with it. CSIRO’s refrigerated-storage guide gives bacon two to three weeks in the fridge, on the same line as whole hams and fermented salamis. This site takes the cautious end and says so: two weeks, counted from the day the packet came home, opened or not.
Two to three weeks, held at two
Curing is what buys bacon its window. The pork it started as gets three to five days on CSIRO’s table. Salted and cured, the same meat gets weeks. CSIRO’s figures assume the coldest part of the fridge, and a packet that lives in the door or rides to the bench every weekend morning does not get that, which is why this site holds bacon at two weeks rather than three. The same rule applies to every range on the site: the short end, every time.
How long does bacon last once opened?
Two weeks from purchase, at most. Opening the packet does not reset the clock, and this site does not read it as starting a new one: a packet opened on day ten has four days left, not fourteen. CSIRO’s figure does not distinguish an opened packet from a sealed one.
Two things override that. Where the packet prints its own after-opening instruction, that instruction wins, in the same way a use-by date does. And where the use-by date on the packet lands before day fourteen, the use-by date wins outright. It is a safety date, and CSIRO’s window is not a licence to go past it.
Once open, fold the packet closed or move the rashers to a container. The cut edges dry out and take on fridge smells long before the two weeks are up, and dry, grey-edged bacon on day twelve is the packet nobody wants to use, which is how it reaches day fifteen.
Sliced ham is not on the same line
The deli meat next to the bacon looks like the same kind of product and is not. CSIRO gives sliced luncheon meats four to five days after purchase, against two to three weeks for bacon, salami and whole hams. Bacon earns its weeks from the cure. A packet of sliced ham does not, and it is covered in its own post.
Signs to trust
Bacon that has turned smells sour or faintly of sulphur when the packet opens. A slimy or tacky film on the rashers says the same thing, and so does a dull grey-green cast rather than the usual pink. Bacon that is merely dry at the edges has lost quality, not safety, and is still bacon.
The half-packet
Nobody finishes a packet of bacon in one go. Three rashers go into Sunday breakfast, the packet is folded over and pushed to the back of the drawer, and the next time anyone thinks about bacon it is a fresh packet at the shop, because the old one was invisible and its date was a memory. Two weeks is a long window. It runs out anyway, under a newer packet.
Pantry puts a date on the packet instead. The receipt dates it the day it comes home with two weeks on the clock, on a list every phone in the household can see. The morning digest raises it in the second week, while there is still a breakfast to be had, and whoever is at the shop on Thursday can see there is a half-packet at home before reaching for another. The old packet gets eaten first, because for once someone knew it was there.