Short shelf/fridge life of chutney

[GrannyHaddock]

Is anyone else fed up with the short life of products once opened? I was just looking at a jar of red onion chutney expiry date Aug 2020. There has been one spoonful taken from it which I know was months ago. The label says keep it in the fridge, use within 4 weeks! I know that jam includes less sugar than before, but is chutney the same? Ingredients are onions, sugar, more sugar, vinegar, more vinegar, grape must, treacle and a few others. The point of chutney is that it is a preserve and should keep all winter at least! Do you just ignore it or take each case on its merits? I am going to use it for onion gravy so it'll get a good boil!

[BarbaraofSevillle]

The label says bollocks IMHO. Chutney in the fridge will be fine for months, if not longer. They just want you to throw it away and buy more.

If you use a clean spoon to take chutney out of the jar, keep it in the fridge and scoop out any surface mould should it arise, which I've never seen even in jars open for 1-2 years, just keep going until the end of the jar.

Instructions like this make me very angry, because it's just so wasteful and unnecessary.

[maxelly]

Yeah chutneys, jams, table sauces etc. I pretty much entirely ignore the labels and go by how it looks. My homemade chutneys keep for months absolutely fine and I figure that surely a factory would put in at least as many preservatives if not more than I do at home, and they must achieve higher levels of sterility of the jars etc. as well. I do have an issue in this house with people (not me!) sticking dirty spoons and knives into jam pots so we do get an issue with surface mould which drives me mad as it ends up getting binned which is the number 1 food wastage cause in the house (the jam is probably fine under the mould but I'm cautious there!)

But if you are careful there's no reason to throw the chutney away so quickly!

[SushiMonster]

I go by how they look/smell/taste for chutney and jam etc - if they look and smell fine they probably are.