Al dente
In cooking, Al dente describes pasta and (less commonly) rice or beans that have been cooked so as to be firm but not hard. “Al dente” also describes vegetables that are cooked to the “tender crisp” phase – still offering resistance to the bite, but cooked through. Keeping the pasta firm is especially important in baked or “al forno” pasta dishes, where the pasta is cooked twice. The term “al dente” comes from Italian and means “to the tooth” or “to the bite”, referring to the need to chew the pasta due to its firmness.