does gefilte fish go bad? i bougt a jar of gefilte fish some time ago and it doesnt have a expiration dat on the jar. I defintely cant tell by the way it smells cuz it smeleed that bad when bought it from the wal-mart.
why the heck are you buying gefilte fish?
Let me tell you two secrets about gefilte fish:
1.–Nobody likes gefilte fish,and
2.–Nobody has the courage to admit it.
So generations of children and grandchildren continue to eat it, because they don’t want to insult their mothers and grandmothers, who continue to make it , because each and every member of their family tells them how good it is, because nobody wants to be the one who ruins the secret.
This has been going on forever, beginning when gefilte fish was invented by early hominids on the plains of Africa, as a way of making a foul-smelling food slightly more pallatable.
So now you have a historic chance-- to actually toss it in the trash! But you can’t bring yourself to do it,can you? 
It’s because the need to keep up the pretence that you like gefilte fish has been built into your genes over the centuries.
It’s not your fault–you were born that way.
They sell gefilte fish at Wal-Mart??? With no expiration date on the jar??? I don’t know if it’s gone bad, but…I wouldn’t eat it for love or money.
Hey, I resent that. I do like gefilte fish. Of course it has to be the stuff in the broth and not the gel. I can’t deal with the gel. Also, it has to be served with the pink horseradish (I swear I was in my 20’s before I knew that horseradish was actually white).
When I was young, I hated the test of that filthy fish, and did not eat it for many years; however, a few years ago, on a whim, I picked up a jar, and to my surprise, I liked it.
As to the question, gefilte fish is white fish and will spoil the same way any fish will spoil. After opening the jar, it will keep a few days in the fridge, a little longer than fish without all that vinegar, preservatives, and whatnot. It’s the whatnot that really gives it a slightly longer life.
Hey, I like gefilte fish, though not the jarred kind.
As everyone else says, it’s quite likely that it does go bad after a while. If you think it’s questionable, chuck it.
Pink horseradish is hard to get here, and it isn’t the same with white. (And I think I was 30 before I figured that out! 
) I love it too, and buy it every so often just for me.
What brand do they sell at Wal-Mart anyway? Sam’s own goyisher gefilte fish?
I bet it’d go good with wasabi horseradish.
No, the gel’s the best part. Otherwise it’s just that runny stuff with no character.
And anyone who doesn’t like gefilte fish has never tasted haggis.
I got a couple jars of Manischiewitz at Wal-Mart after Passover last year. I lurves me some gefilte fish!
Robin
The jarred stuff is nasty, but it’ll probably keep unopened for a fairly long time (several years). I mean, you see dusty jars of it on the shelves of supermarkets far from any major Jewish population but keep a small ‘kosher’ section (consisting entirely of Manishevitz products ), and I doubt there’s much turnover of that stock. Once you’ve opened it, though, it probably goes bad within a week.
Now, if you want good gefilte, you need to either make it yourself, although almost nobody bothers, since it’s a pain, or buy the frozen logs’o’gefilte and simmer for 1.5 hours with an onion and a carrot. The frozen kind probably ain’t available at Wal-Mart - I think I’ve only seen it in kosher specialty stores or in grocery stores with at least a small kosher-observant community nearby. But it’s a completely different kind of food from that icky jarred stuff.
You’re all seriously underestimating the shelf life of gefilte fish. I once ate one that turned out to be about three months old with no ill effects. Of course, I was rather unnerved when I learned the age of the fish I’d just eaten, but a little frantic googling turned up that the fish I’d eaten hadn’t actually expired yet.
Pardon my thread necromancy, but I was googling the same question and ended up here. In case anyone else does the same, here’s the answer I found:
http://www.manischewitz.com/faqs.html
In brief, there’s a code on the jar that you can decode to a date, and the shelf life of unopened Manishewitz gefilte fish is 4 years. Which isn’t really that surprising, when you think about it. 
(oh, and while frozen is good, I, for one, love the jarred kind. Mrs. Adler’s sweet Jerusalem variety, if possible.)
Was it wriggling on the way down?
I like gefilte fish, and so do the Neville kitties (they’re Jewish kitties). I’m not sure I’d eat gefilte fish from Wal-Mart, but they’ll take it off your hands, if you don’t want it.
It does!
sigh
I like gefilte, including the gel, and I prefer the stuff from the jar to my dear old grandmother’s (I will hunt down and kill anybody who looks her up and tells her that though). And I actually like haggis.
I love it.
My kids love it.
My mom ground fish from scratch and it was wonderful. I sometimes buy the jar stuff and simmer it with carrots, onions and parsley and it tastes much fresher. I like it.
I like gefilte fish, though not the gel. Gelatinous things generally disgust me.
I haven’t tried real haggis (hard to find kosher ones), but I like vegetarian haggis.
I’ve had homemade gefilte fish. It was a little better than the jarred kind, but not that much, not enough to be worth the effort IMO. But the real function of gefilte fish is as a delivery system for horseradish.
(aside) I have always contended that no one really likes the taste of any fish. Oh, they’ll tell you they love talapia and salmon and sea bass, etc. but they don’t. Here’s how I know: when the food is not to their liking, they say it tastes “too fishy.” QED.
My mother-in-law made gefilte fish from scratch, and while the rest of the family contended that it tasted like sawdust with a little ground knuckle in it, to me, it tasted like fish. And I HATE FISH.
To the OP - don’t worry about the expiration date. When it’s freshly made, it tastes too fishy to eat. Toss it.
I would have thought this was the first rule of food spoilage: If it smells bad, don’t eat it. If it already smelled bad when you bought it, then don’t even eat it then.