Al dente

In cooking, al dente (, Italian: [al ˈdɛnte]; lit. 'to the tooth') pasta or rice is cooked to be firm to the bite. The term also extends to firmly-cooked vegetables. In contemporary Italian cooking, it is considered to be the ideal consistency for pasta and involves a brief cooking time. Molto al dente is the Italian term for slightly undercooked pasta. When cooking commercial pasta, the al dente phase occurs right before the white of the pasta center disappears.