Planning to have corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes for St. Patrick’s Day? The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has tips to help you make safe choices while preparing your meal. Knowing how to keep food safe will help reduce the risk of foodborne illness.

Follow these quick steps to keep food safety in mind:

• Uncooked corned beef in a pouch with pickling juices which has a “sell-by” date, or no date, may be stored five to seven days in the refrigerator (40 F or less) unopened.
• Uncooked corned beef with a “use-by” date can be stored unopened in the refrigerator until that date.
• Uncooked corned beef brisket, that is drained and well wrapped, may be frozen for one month for best quality.

Cooking

• Cook raw corned beef to a minimum internal temperature of 145 F, as measured with a food thermometer, before removing the meat from the heat source.
• Allow the corned beef to rest for at least three minutes before slicing or consuming.

Leftovers

• Any corned beef left over should be refrigerated promptly, within two hours of cooking.
• Cooked corned beef may be refrigerated for up to four days and frozen for two to three months for best quality.
• Reheated leftovers should be cooked to a temperature of 165 F, as measured with a food thermometer.

More tips

For more food safety tips on cooking corned beef, please visit the USDA’s Corned Beef Food Safety Tips webpage. You can also follow FSIS on X, and follow USDA on Instagram and Facebook.

Please call the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline with any food safety questions at 1-888-MPHotline (1-888-674-6854), email MPHotline@usda.gov, or chat with a food safety specialist live at https://ask.usda.gov/s/ from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday.