We all know that refrigerators store food, but through enhancements recently introduced by Samsung Electronics America Inc., they can help cook meals as well. The Samsung Family Hub smart refrigerator is now being shipped with an app from the sous-vide circulator Nomiku downloaded inside. Tap the app on the smart fridge and receive cooking instructions for the vacuum-sealed Nomiku meals in a low-temperature water bath.

“Everybody has been lusting after sous-vide since we invented the technology in 2012,” said Lisa Fetterman (pictured), chief executive officer of Nomiku Inc. “This is foolproof cooking.”

Fetterman stopped by theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, and spoke with host John Furrier (@furrier) at the Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco, California. They discussed the history behind Nomiku’s formation and the opportunities offered by Samsung’s connected device technology.

Lust for a sous-vide machine

Nomiku’s sous-vide technology sprang from a desire by Fetterman to build her own affordable immersion circulator. The New York University graduate spent her post-college years working for some of the top chefs in the nation and became enthralled by the sous-vide cooker.

“We would cook so many of our components in it, and I lusted after one myself,” Fetterman recalled.

On a first date with her future husband, the chef-in-training and the young physicist came up with a way to build a sous-vide machine inexpensively using simple parts found at a hardware store. A Kickstarter campaign raised $600,000 in barely a month, and Nomiku was off and cooking.

The combination of Samsung and Nomiku on the Family Hub platform offers intriguing possibilities for automated inventory management and learned consumer behavior. A hungry user who decides to cook a piece of chicken at 4 a.m. using sous-vide can trigger a wealth of potential marketing opportunities tied to the connected home device and a mobile app.

“We recognize that those folks do CrossFit, they will eat again at 7 a.m. … and we can recommend things for them as their day goes along,” Fetterman said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Samsung Developer Conference.

Photo: SiliconANGLE