Bacon

Bacon keeps one week refrigerated whether or not the package is open, which surprises people who assume the sealed pack lasts longer. Once the vacuum seal is broken, rewrap it tightly or move it to an airtight container — the curing salts slow bacteria but do nothing to stop the fat oxidizing in open air.

The freezer window is unusually short at about one month, and it is worth arranging your storage around that. Roll individual strips and freeze them separated, or freeze in portions you will actually use at once, because you cannot thaw a solid brick of bacon partway.

Cooked bacon keeps 4–5 days refrigerated and freezes better than raw. Rendered bacon fat, strained into a jar, keeps for months in the refrigerator.

Bacon fails by a different mechanism from the rest of this category, which is why its numbers look strange next to them.

The curing salts — sodium chloride and sodium nitrite — substantially suppress bacterial growth. That is the entire point of curing, and it is why bacon gets a week in the fridge while fresh pork gets a few days. But nothing in the cure protects against oxidation of the fat, and bacon is roughly half fat by weight.

Fat oxidation is a chemical reaction with oxygen, not a biological process, so freezing slows it but does not stop it. This is why bacon carries a one-month freezer recommendation while lean pork chops get twelve. The bacon is still perfectly safe after a month at 0°F — it simply develops the stale, cardboard-like rancid flavor that no amount of cooking will hide.

So the two failure modes give you two different signals. Rancidity is a quality problem you will taste. Sliminess, a sour smell, or green-gray discoloration means bacterial spoilage has beaten the cure, and that is a discard.