how long can you keep frozen chicken?

question: grocery-store chicken, not organic, thrown in the freezer when you get home. how long is it good and when should you throw it away?

Is there any particular reason you want to keep chicken in your freezer? I try never to freeze any kind of protein--fish, meat, chicken--because I find that thawed protein just does not have anywhere near as much taste as fresh food.

Also, the thing to remember is that self-defrosting refrigerators blow warm air into the freezer compartment in order to keep them frost-free. It's not much warm air, and it doesn't last very long, but even a few seconds of it, done repeatedly, probably results in deterioration of the outer layer of any protein. I suspect that if you wrapped your chicken really well--say, 2 or 3 layers--it would undoubtedly last much longer.

Usually not more than 6 months. Here's a link to a freezer storage chart.

Link: http://web.extension.uiuc.edu/Rockfor...

And 6 months is assuming that you have removed it from the package it came in, carefully wrapped it properly for freezing, and kept it at or below 0°F. If you just toss it in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator in the package it came in, it's likely to be pretty unappetizing within a month or so, due to freezer burn.

Good point. I always rewrap stuff going into a freezer, so I wasn't think about not doing so.