How long is cooked chicken good for in the fridge According to USDA?
The government provides its guidance on how long is cooked chicken good for in the fridge. The official government USDA’s web-site states, that cooked chicken can stay good in the refrigerator for about 3-4 days if kept at a temperature less than 40°F degrees. According to USDA and based on scientific research, refrigeration slows down bacteria growth but does not stop it. And it is bacteria growth that makes food start going bad.
Essentially, if your fridge settings are remarkably close to freezing temperature, then cooked chicken meat will stay good for a longer time than if the temperature setting is warmer. Or, if your refrigerator is old or had some defect, which does not allow it to trap cooled air properly, then chicken meat can go bad sooner.
Surprisingly, sometimes cooked chicken meat can stay good in the fridge for even longer – 5 or even 6 days. If you have a good fridge and if meat was cooked very well.
Why and how cooked chicken goes bad in the fridge?
Again, according to the USDA website, there are two types of bacteria. Pathogenic bacteria cause foodborne illness. And spoilage bacteria cause food to spoil and cause unpleasant odor and taste.
Pathogenic bacteria are the most dangerous. It can grow rapidly in what is called a “danger zone.” The danger zone is a temperature range between 40°F and 140°F degrees. Because of that, USDA recommends keeping food out of danger zone: below 40°F in the fridge, and above 140°F for hot food.
The worst part is that by itself pathogenic bacteria may not change the odor or taste of chicken meat in the fridge. Thus, we cannot even know that that type of bacteria is present and grows in that meat.
Spoilage bacteria, on the other hand, most of the time cannot cause a foodborne illness or even upset stomach. This means, that humans could eat spoiled meat and would not get sick from it. Yet practically all people decline to eat spoiled smelly food for obvious reasons.
Yet, some pathogenic bacteria could grow even in a cold refrigerator. But the good thing is that usually, both types of bacteria grow in the meat together. Therefore, if you feel the odor from the chicken meat, or see suspicious changes in structure or color, then it means both that:
- Spoilage bacteria has grown much, and
- Most likely pathogenic bacteria have simultaneously developed in the meat, even though we do not see it.
We should be very thankful for spoilage bacteria to act as an indicator of spoiled food danger for us!
Make cooked chicken stay good in the fridge longer
There are few tricks you can do to make a cooked chicken last longer in the refrigerator. Small things matter.
- Cook chicken well on properly hot heat (165°F internal temperature for meat, according to USDA) to kill a maximum of pathogenic and spoilage bacteria.
- Refrigerate cooked chicken for a maximum of 2 hours after cooking. On a hot summer day or in the hot kitchen refrigerate it after less than 1 hour.
- Make sure cooked chicken does not touch any other food, raw or cooked. Or any unclean surface.
- Therefore, I do not recommend it mixing in a salad or with pasta, like some suggest. Keep it separately from everything.
- Try cutting it into smaller pieces for more effective cooling and refrigerating.
- Clean very well dish or other surfaces on which you put the chicken right after cooking, or in which you will put the chicken in the fridge. This could be a cutting board, tray, or dish.
- This way you remove maximum bacteria which could later transfer to chicken and grow in it, essentially.
- Before refrigerating, cover the chicken well in plastic wrap or put it in a tightly closed zip log bag or airtight container. Lack of air may slow down bacteria growth. As most bacteria need oxygen. Put pieces into zip-log tight bags, or smaller shallow plastic containers with tight lids to prevent air from coming inside.
- Wash well all utensils which you use to handle cooked chicken. This includes washing the knife with which you are about to cut cooked chicken.
- Wash hands well after you handle raw chicken and before you touch the cooked chicken. Use plain soap and water to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds.
Just in case, I looked up what other authors recommend. On one of the forums, a person who is an engineer recommends cooking chicken is properly sealed a plastic bag designed for cooking (you can find such online).
After the chicken inside it is cooked, take the bag (or bags) out, and quickly cool with the iced water. I think you can drop it in the ice and put more ice on it for simplicity.
Once it cools down, put it in the fridge sealed. If a seal does not break, then this cooked chicken can stay good for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator.
Why this method works? Because even when you leave cooked chicken to cool down for 1-2 hours, bacteria already start developing inside. Cutting cooling time to a much shorter time will not give bacteria long enough to do even that. Thus, it will take longer for it to spread and develop while the chicken is sitting in the fridge.
I think this is a cool method to use, so to speak.
Important and useful tips
Logically speaking, chicken chopped in small pieces before cooking will probably stay good in the refrigerator longer because smaller pieces are often cooked more thoroughly than the whole chicken.
Salt can penetrate meat and salt inhibits bacteria growth. Because of those salt properties, cooking chicken in well-salted water or seasoning it well with salt usually results in that cooked chicken stays good in the fridge for several days longer. It works, although the chicken comes out saltier than I like. But many people are fine with the somewhat salty meat.
Someone recommended cooking or marinating it in lemon or other citrus water but I never tried it myself. Marinating with vinegar usually also extends cooked meat storage life. Now you know quite a few useful tricks, don’t you?
Is it safe to eat cooked chicken after refrigerating for more than 4-5 days?
Well, I have eaten cooked chicken which was in the refrigerator for longer than 3-4 days. But that is rarer. Usually, if I follow the tips, I laid out above in this article. See, if you cook the chicken yourself, rather than buy cooked one from the store, you know exactly when you refrigerated it. And you refrigerate it as soon as it cooled down.
Often, I stored it for 4-5, and sometimes 6 days until finally eating the leftovers.
But recall from an earlier section that sometimes the meat can be already bad but not smell bad yet. Therefore, it is better to stay safe and follow the rules, than be sorry later.
You take the above precautions, your salt, etc., and it may be good even a week or up to two weeks in the fridge. But again, this is a case-by-case basis and food safety always comes first. In short – cooking and packing methods also make a difference. Seasoning too may increase cooked chicken shelf life.
Unless you want to become an expert in longer food storage, I would stick with USDA guidelines and consume the chicken within 3-4 days after cooking.
Fresher food tastes better and is usually a little more nutritious. It is digested better too.
Final thoughts
Few more useful tips include the following. The previously frozen chicken went bad sooner than chicken which has never been frozen. Why? Because freezing destroys the structure of meat, making it softer, more microporous, and thus creating more possibilities for entering and developing by opportunistic bacteria.
Frozen meat is to be used in times of need. Keep it for emergencies, or if you get sick, and so on. Keep things fresh as much as you can.
Also, do not boil or re-cook chicken meat after it already goes bad.
It is not a good practice because bacteria already released bad toxins (chemicals) all over the meat and boiling it again kills bacteria but does not kill all those chemicals. I think it is bad practice useful only in times of extreme hunger and lack of possibility to find other food.
Some people take 3-4 days old chicken from the fridge and boil it into a soup. That is before chicken already spoils. My grandma did that. Such a method extends the life of the cooked chicken meat.
Then there is an old rumor that chicken meat with bones stays good for a longer time. I am not sure this is true or not because I never tested it for that purpose. On the other hand, I do know that I like those thighs.
Summary of factors which prolong cooked chicken life in the fridge are:
- Washing hands,
- refrigerating chicken practically as soon as it is cooks,
- washing and cleaning to the point of making all surfaces, utensils, and containers sterile,
- Salting and seasoning well,
- Packing tightly in a sterile bag, wrap or container, to prevent air from entering the packaging.
These are several simple principles that will undoubtedly work. They have been proven not only by my own experience but my experience by many other amateur chefs cooking food for themselves of their families. These simple rules have worked for thousands of years for our ancestors who did not have refrigerators. Why not use these methods to our advantage.
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