If you're poking chicken in a food container from meal days gone by, you might be wondering if it's safe to eat. Poultry is a higher-risk meat than beef due to its propensity to develop E. coli and other food-borne illnesses. That's why you never want to eat spoiled chicken, and storing it properly is the key to avoiding sickness.
But that begs the question: how long does it take for chicken to spoil and how long can you wait before it's too late?
The USDA gives raw chicken just 48 hours to be cooked and consumed after purchase, but that timeframe errs on the safe side and isn't the final word on when a bird goes bad. Cooked chicken has a longer fridge-life and a lower risk of serious food poisoning, but even chicken in its cooked form has limits.
If you're wondering whether or not your chicken is bad or how long it is good for in the fridge, we have answers. Here, we explain how long chicken typically lasts in the fridge and freezer -- both cooked and uncooked -- and how to know when it's time to put that poultry out to pasture.
How long does raw chicken last in the fridge?
The sell-by date on chicken can be a full week after you buy it. That doesn't mean you should wait that long to cook it. David Watsky/CNET
The USDA recommends cooking chicken one or two days after you buy it. If that seems conservative and sooner than the sell-by date on the package, that's because it is -- but there's a reason for that. The sell-by, use-by or freeze-by date may be as long as a week from when you bought it, but that's just the chicken producer's guess as to how long the chicken will be at optimal taste before it starts deteriorating in quality.
As many in this Reddit thread and others assert, you can probably split the difference without serious ramifications, but you should never eat chicken that's been in the fridge for more than three or four days. The reason why chicken isn't necessarily safe to eat until that sell-by date is two-fold:
For one, that date isn't issued by a regulating body but rather by the brand. While poultry brands do have to consider consumer safety, their chief goal is enticing retailers to buy their product. The longer it's "good for," the better chance they'll have of making a larger sale.
The other reason is that grocery store meat fridges and coolers are usually colder than your average home refrigerator. A normal fridge has to keep meat cold without freezing delicate vegetables and other groceries. Supermarket meat coolers only need to keep meat cold, so they can be at lower resting temperatures. Chicken kept at a colder temperature is naturally going to last longer.
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