In cooking, the adjective al dente (pronounced al DEN-tay) 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 is an act of preparing food for eating. ... Pasta is a type of food made from flour, water, and sometimes eggs, which is mixed, kneaded and formed into various shapes, and boiled prior to consumption. ... Species Oryza glaberrima Oryza sativa Rice refers to two species (Oryza sativa and Oryza glaberrima) of grass, native to tropical and subtropical southeastern Asia and to Africa, which together provide more than one fifth of the calories consumed by humans[1]. Rice is an annual plant, growing to 1-1. ... Vegetables in a market Venn diagram representing the relationship between (botanical) fruits and vegetables. ... This article or section is missing references or citation of sources. ... A bite is a wound received from the mouth (and in particular, the teeth) of an animal. ...

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.

The term is very commonly used as a name for Italian restaurants around the world.