SALMON · IN THE FRIDGE
1–3 days
One to three days, and one is the honest plan for fish you bought from a counter. USDA groups salmon with the fatty fish — tuna, mackerel, bluefish, catfish, mullet — at one to three days refrigerated.
Frozen, fatty fish get two to three months, which is markedly less than lean white fish. The oil is the reason: it goes rancid in the freezer while the flesh itself is still fine.
These are quality windows drawn from published USDA food-safety guidance — an estimate of how long food stays good, not a safety date. If the package carries a printed use-by date, that date governs.
ALSO SOLD AS tuna · mackerel · bluefish · catfish · mullet · fatty fish · oily fish
By storage method
- In the refrigerator
- 1–3 days
- In the freezer
- 2–3 months
Near the end of the window?
Cook it today. Fish is the category where "tomorrow" is a genuinely different food, and no storage trick meaningfully extends fresh fish in a home refrigerator. If you cannot cook it, freeze it immediately rather than at the end of day three — you are freezing whatever quality is left, not restoring what has gone.
SOURCES
- FoodSafety.gov Cold Food Storage Chart, Fin Fish: "Fatty Fish (bluefish, catfish, mackerel, mullet, salmon, tuna, etc.) — 1 to 3 days refrigerated, 2 to 3 months frozen." Fatty fish freeze for less time than lean fish.
- USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, Cold Food Storage Charts (fsis.usda.gov).
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.