Al dente

In cooking, al dente (/ælˈdɛnteɪ/, Italian: [al ˈdɛnte]; lit. 'to the tooth') describes pasta or rice that is cooked to be firm to the bite. The term also extends to firmly-cooked vegetables.

In contemporary Italian cooking, the term identifies the ideal consistency for pasta and involves a brief cooking time. Molto al dente is the Italian term for slightly undercooked pasta. Undercooking pasta is used in the first round of cooking when a pasta dish is going to be cooked twice.

According to the American Diabetes Association, pasta that is cooked al dente has a lower glycemic index than pasta that is cooked soft. When cooking commercial pasta, the al dente phase occurs right before the white of the pasta center disappears.