Scenario · Power outage
Power outage food safety: what to keep and toss.
Power out? Start with the food's cold history. Keep doors closed, prepare effective cold storage early, and use the food-specific chart when temperatures or storage history are uncertain.
Do this now
- Keep the refrigerator and freezer closed as much as possible. A closed, correctly cold refrigerator ordinarily holds suitable conditions for about 4 hours; a full freezer about 48 hours (half-full about 24 hours).
- Prepare an iced cooler early when an extended outage is likely. At the four-hour point, transfer refrigerated perishables if ice is available and keep them at 40°F / about 4°C or colder. Do not wait until eight hours.
- Check food and appliance temperatures before cooling resumes, or as soon as power returns. A later cold reading does not show how warm food became earlier.
Refrigerator
4 hours
Closed-door planning estimate for a correctly cold refrigerator. It is not a guarantee for an open door or an already-warm appliance.
Freezer (full)
48 hours
Closed-door planning estimate. A half-full freezer ordinarily holds suitable conditions for about 24 hours.
Chart condition
40 °F / 4°C
The chart below uses exposure to 40°F / about 4°C or above for more than 2 hours for many refrigerated perishables.
Choose your situation
Use the path that matches what you know now. The outage estimate, the food's warm-exposure history and the food category answer different questions.
Refrigerator decisions
First check for contamination or clearly unsuitable food; time estimates do not override contamination, spoilage or stricter product instructions. A closed refrigerator during an outage is different from one whose door was left open.
- Known short, closed-door outage: use the four-hour estimate only when the refrigerator started cold and stayed closed. Do not label an already-warm refrigerator acceptable solely because the outage was brief.
- Known warm exposure: use the food-specific table and its exceptions. The two-hour condition applies to the time a particular food was actually at the chart temperature, not automatically to the whole outage.
- History missing beyond the closed-fridge window: discard refrigerated perishables when you cannot establish that they stayed adequately cold. A normal smell, a small taste or a later cold reading cannot repair missing history.
- Power was restored earlier, or there was no thermometer: a cold refrigerator now does not reset the earlier exposure. After an overnight outage with no reliable history, use the conservative perishable-food route and keep the table's exceptions separate.
- Protect other food: keep leaking raw meat or seafood sealed and separate from ready-to-eat dairy, leftovers and produce.
Source method. This guide follows CDC household outage instructions and FoodSafety.gov's food-by-food chart. The CDC page is dated November 24, 2025, and the chart was reviewed August 8, 2024. Some government pages phrase exposure limits differently; the FDA's broad outage page is a comparator, so this page does not combine its more permissive wording with the selected CDC and FoodSafety.gov framework. The cooked-dal row is an editorial mapping to the chart's leftovers category, not a named dal row; the juice rows do not establish a rule for every homemade juice. The limitation on re-cooling is an inference from time-and-temperature guidance, not a direct appliance study.
What to keep and what to discard
This is a refrigerated-food warm-exposure reference, not a universal shelf-life table. Apply it only under the condition shown in the caption, and do not treat a keep row as unlimited warm storage.
| Food category | Action under the chart condition |
|---|---|
| Meat, poultry, seafood and meat/egg salads | Discard |
| Milk, yogurt, cream and refrigerated milk alternatives | Discard |
| Refrigerated eggs and egg dishes | Discard |
| Soups, stews, cooked rice/pasta and leftovers, including cooked dal | Discard |
| Soft, shredded and low-fat cheeses | Discard |
| Hard cheeses in the chart's keep category; processed cheese | Keep under the chart's conditions; this does not include shredded cheese. |
| Butter and margarine | Keep under the chart's conditions. |
| Cut produce and packaged pre-cut greens | Discard |
| Whole, uncut produce | Keep unless contamination or another discard condition applies. |
| Listed stable condiments such as mustard, ketchup, soy sauce and pickles | Keep under the chart's conditions; do not generalize to every sauce. |
| Creamy dressings, opened pasta sauce, fish sauce and oyster sauce | Discard |
| Opened fruit juice | Keep under the chart's conditions. |
| Opened vegetable juice | Discard |
| Plain bread and pastries | Keep if otherwise suitable. |
| Custard, cream- or cheese-filled bakery items | Discard |
One product-specific exception. Opened mayonnaise, tartar sauce and horseradish have their own chart condition: discard after exposure above 50°F / 10°C for more than 8 hours. This valid product exception is separate from the four-hour cooler-planning advice.
Food categories can differ even when the warm exposure is the same. Keep the full FoodSafety.gov outage chart available for an item that is not listed here.
Freezer decisions
Use the 48-hour full-freezer or 24-hour half-freezer estimate for planning, then assess individual packages before the freezer has time to re-freeze them. These estimates do not add to a separate warm-exposure allowance.
- Food that remained fully hard-frozen and otherwise suitable is not automatically discarded just because an outage occurred.
- Some foods can be refrozen when they are still at 40°F / about 4°C or colder or contain ice crystals. Refreezing may reduce quality, but quality loss is different from unsafe previous handling.
- Ice cream and frozen yogurt are exceptions: discard them when thawed or partially thawed under the chart's guidance.
- Ice crystals noticed only after the freezer has restarted do not prove that a package had an uninterrupted safe history. Assess the earlier condition when you can.
The two clocks are not additive
| Clock | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Closed-appliance outage estimate | How long a correctly cold, closed appliance can ordinarily retain suitable conditions without power. |
| Food warm-exposure rule | How long a particular food has actually spent at the chart's specified temperature condition. |
Do not add these allowances. Do not wait for the appliance estimate and then start a fresh food-exposure timer. Food may have warmed at an unknown earlier point, and a brief power restoration does not automatically erase an unsafe or uncertain history.
Prepare for next time
- Keep appliance thermometers in the refrigerator (target 40°F / about 4°C or colder) and freezer (target 0°F / about −18°C or colder).
- Keep ice and a cooler available. Pack food so it stays at 40°F / about 4°C or colder; how long a cooler stays cold depends on the ice, load and room temperature.
- Use shallow, protected containers for leftovers and separate them from raw-food leakage. Prompt refrigeration matters; do not wait for a whole pot to reach room temperature.
Related guidance
For ordinary storage outside an outage, see normal cooked-dal storage and the cooked-chicken guide. The source methodology explains how household guidance and uncertainty are handled.
Keep the decision proportionate. Losing food can be costly. Keep what the evidence supports keeping, but do not gamble on perishable food with unsafe or uncertain storage history.
Raw chicken normal storage guide
Raw ground beef normal storage guide
Raw fish / seafood normal storage guide
Cooked chicken / leftovers normal storage guide
Eggs normal storage guide
Milk normal storage guide
Or search the full database for the specific item you are triaging.