She has published over 30 cookbooks, and co-produced three seasons of her award-winning television series, Annabel Langbein The Free Range Cook, which launched on the TV One network in New Zealand and has since screened in more than 90 countries.

Her father worked as an engineer but was a keen vegetable gardener and beekeeper, while her mother was a cook and home science university graduate.

She left home at age 16 to live for several years with her then-boyfriend and their friends in a run-down house by the Whanganui River, without electricity or running water.

[2][7] She has never formally trained as a chef, but obtained a Diploma of Horticulture with Distinction from Lincoln University in 1981,[8] and attended residential cooking courses at the Culinary Institute of America in upstate New York.

The Best of Annabel Langbein: Great Food for Busy Lives, was published in 1997, has been reprinted numerous times since and is known as "the kitchen bible" in many New Zealand households.

[13] Her philanthropic work has included raising substantial sums for the National Heart Foundation of New Zealand,[14] the Life Education Trust,[15] and other charity groups.

[16][17][18] UK-based global content company FremantleMedia first noticed Langbein's presenting skills in 2008, when she posted on YouTube a series of how-to cooking features that she had made to promote her book Eat Fresh.