CORN · IN THE FRIDGE
3–5 days
Three days. Sweet corn loses sugar rapidly, and UC Davis notes the loss is much faster at 5°C than at freezing — so a home refrigerator is slowing the decline, not stopping it. Corn bought today and eaten today is a measurably different vegetable from the same ear on Friday.
Keep the husks on. They are the packaging.
These are quality windows drawn from published UC Davis storage research — an estimate of how long produce stays good, not a safety date. If the package carries a printed use-by date, that date governs.
ALSO SOLD AS sweet corn · corn on the cob · corn cob
By storage method
- In the refrigerator
- 3–5 days
- In the freezer
- 10 months
Near the end of the window?
Cut the kernels off the cob and freeze them, or cook it now and treat it as an ingredient rather than a centerpiece — chowder, fritters, anything where sweetness is one note among several. Corn that has been sitting is not bad corn, just less sweet corn.
SOURCES
- UC Davis: sweet corn loses sugar rapidly; best held at 0°C, much faster loss at 5°C. Home fridge keeps eating quality only a few days. Conservative home 3-5 d. Haircut 1 d.
- UC Davis Postharvest Technology Center, Fresh Produce Storage & Shelf-Life recommendations (postharvest.ucdavis.edu).
Ranges are as published. Treat the short end as your real window — grocery produce is already days past harvest, and a cooked dish starts its clock at the stove.
Looking up your groceries one at a time is a hobby. A bad one.
Savery scans your grocery receipt and tracks these windows for everything you bought at once. The spinach, the strawberries, the milk you forgot about — all on one shelf.