Paula Deen may be the consummate Hufflepuff. Hufflepuff is the home of the loyal and true and friendly and inclusive. I feel very certain that exemplary Hufflepuff Paula Deen has a gigantic Southern house usually full of family members, friends, and various people she doesn’t even know—and she feeds them four or five homemade meals a day. Even Kathy Griffin said that when she shot an episode of My Life on the D-List at Paula Deen’s, she came downstairs in the morning to a loud “Y’all want some breakfast?!” and was promptly served grits and eggs. Paula Deen is just freaking nice to everyone, from Richard Simmons to Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter (those are some really good episodes, by the way). Voldemort himself could come to the door she’d screech “HEY Y’ALL,” thrust a piece of peach pie into his snakey hands, and pour him something with a lot of Captain Morgan. Sorting hat says: Hufflepuff!

Sandra Lee is a nice-looking woman and is primarily understood as talentless, and because of this you don’t notice right away that her startlingly blue eyes are cold hard sapphires of ambition. Sandra Lee was once a destitute preteen saddled with caring for her five younger siblings because of her negligent mother, and now? Somehow a Food Network star, despite an apparent lack of any cooking talent or skill, who is romantically involved with the governor of the New York. We should thank our lucky stars that Sandra Lee’s ambition was to become a TV personality and fundraise for food shelves instead of to overthrow the US government or forcibly convert the world’s population to Scientology. Anthony Bourdain describes her as a “powerful force” and says she’s “not someone to be dismissed, clearly.” Anthony Bourdain respects no Food Network star, but he fears Sandra Lee. Sorting hat says: Slytherin!

Remember how Ina Garten was a White House nuclear policy analyst? Every time I hear that fact, I think “What the hell?!” and then “Oh, of course. Of course she was.” Of all the Food Network personalities, it would be the easiest to persuade me that Ina is a wizard. She speaks with the intelligence and grace of Rowena Ravenclaw herself. She might be wearing Rowena’s lost intelligence-enhancing diadem right now. We just can’t see it with our Muggle eyes and can only perceive an aura of wisdom and well-earned confidence. And she’s a little bit of a snob. Sorting hat says: Ravenclaw!

Throwdown always seemed sort of presumptuous and rude to me, and a lot of the time Bobby Flay seems to have a a barely concealed disdain for his opponents’ Midwestern apple pie stand or whatever. The forced friendliness of the staged competitive barbs traded between him and his Throwdown opponent always implied to me that Bobby really actually does want to beat the shit out of whatever podunk donut shop owner he is competing with. He will pull out all the stops and cut you down in front of your entire town to win this contest his producers set up. I find it uncomfortable to watch. Sorting hat says: Slytherin!

Alton Brown would have majored in Potions, J.K. Rowling’s magic-universe approximation of chemistry. He would have been the nerd in your class who would have been able to tell you in minute detail why your polyjuice potion didn’t come out right and you would have gaped at him over the top of your cauldron, strangely transfixed by this quirky but sort of charismatic young wizard and his awkward mole. I can picture Alton Brown’s entire magical career. Alton would have been the best Potions student Hogwarts had seen in decades, even earning Snape’s grudging respect, and would have gone on to work in some high-level quantum magic R&D. Sorting hat says: Ravenclaw!

As soon as the sorting hat is pierced with those frosted spines it knows where Guy Fieri belongs: the most inclusive and least discerning of the houses. Sorting hat says: Hufflepuff!

– Linnea Goderstad is just as surprised as you that there weren’t any Gryffindors.