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Wikipedia: Al dente In cooking, the adjective al dente (pronounced al dent e`)describes pasta and (less commonly) rice that have been cooked to be edible but still firm, or vegetables that are cooked to the "tender crisp" phase - still offering resistance to the bite, but cooked through. It is often considered to be the ideal form of cooked pasta. Keeping the pasta firm is especially important in baked or al forno pasta dishes. The term comes from Italian where it means "to the tooth," or "to the bite," referring to the need to chew the pasta due to its firmness.
Cooking rice or pasta to the al dente stage requires a certain amount of practice and skill, since it is a relatively brief midway stage between under-done (in which case rice or dried pasta stays hard in the middle, and fresh pasta tastes "floury"), and over-cooking, where the dish lacks texture and is considered too soft.
Source: wikipedia
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