Darker and thicker sauce doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad, but you might want to get rid of it for quality reasons. If it smells off or funny, discard it.Īnother thing to look for is color and texture change. That usually happens when the bottle hasn’t been properly sealed in the production process or the package got damaged and air got into the bottle. Mold is much more likely to form after the bottle of jar is opened, but is can happen to an unopened bottle too. First, check if there are any signs of mold or anything else that’s not supposed to be in the jar. Telling if spaghetti sauce is bad is quite simple. If you don’t plan to use the leftovers within those 3 to 4 days, freeze them. As usual, the best option is to prepare only as much sauce as you need for the next dish so you don’t have any leftovers. Homemade spaghetti sauce lasts about 3-4 days in the fridge. This way it’ll be still quite good when you need it again. If you plan to store an opened pasta sauce for longer than a week, consider freezing it. So after two weeks of storing it in the refrigerator it might still safe to eat, but taste rater bad. The longer it sits there after opening, the worst its quality. When it comes to opened store-bought spaghetti sauce, it should last about a week to maybe 10 days in the fridge. In some cases, you might want to throw it out for quality reasons.
So if it’s already a few months after the printed date, and the sauce didn’t go bad, make sure it tastes good enough to be used. That being said, pasta sauce, like almost every other food out there, loses its quality over time. That’s a rather safe estimate and in most cases it should remain just fine for at least a few months more. So as long so the bottle remains unopened (an undamaged), spaghetti sauce will last for at least 3 to 5 months after the date printed on the package. As you likely know, “best by” date isn’t an expiration date but an indicator of how long the product should be at peak quality. Store-bought spaghetti sauce usually has a “best by” date. If it’s going to sit there for a few months, consider labeling the package with the date of freezing for reference later. Just transfer the sauce into an airtight container or a freezer bag and chuck it into the freezer. If you need to store opened or homemade spaghetti sauce for a longer period of time, freezing is an option. If you’ve made spaghetti sauce from scratch, unless you’ve canned it, it should always sit in the fridge. Once you open the bottle, keep it in the fridge. If that’s not an option, storing it somewhere else in the kitchen is okay too, as long as it doesn’t sit in sunlight. Unopened store-bought spaghetti sauce should be stored in a cool and dark place, preferably in the pantry.