POTATOES · IN THE PANTRY
3–8 weeks
Three weeks is a safe plan and eight is achievable, in a cool dark cupboard. Commercially potatoes hold for five to ten months at 4–8°C, but UC Davis is explicit that you should not refrigerate them at home: cold converts their starch to sugar and they sweeten. Dark matters too — light is what turns them green.
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 potato · russet · yukon gold · red potatoes · white potatoes · fingerling
By storage method
- Cool, dark pantry
- 3–8 weeks
- In the refrigerator
- Not recommended
Near the end of the window?
Sprouting is not the end. Rub the sprouts off and cook as normal; a potato that has gone soft or shrivelled throughout is a different matter. Keep them away from onions, which is the more common storage mistake in a small kitchen.
More on what the cold helps and what it quietly ruins: what doesn't belong in the refrigerator.
SOURCES
- UC Davis: potatoes are a storage crop held 5-10 months at 4-8°C (do NOT refrigerate at home — converts starch to sugar/sweetens); keep in a cool dark pantry. Conservative home 3-8+ weeks. Haircut 3 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.