Cooking appliance with expandable cooktop surface

Abstract

A cooking appliance has a multi-section cooking surface that is expandable to provide a larger depth cooking surface by slideably extending a moveable front burner section of the cooking surface. The cooking appliance includes a base section extending below the cooking surface, the base section providing structure and physical support for the cooking surface. The cooking appliance includes a multi-sectioned cooking surface having a stationary rear burner section and a movable front burner section. The stationary rear burner section includes at least one rear/back burner, and the moveable front burner section includes at least one front burner. The moveable front burner section translates/slides forward away from the stationary rear burner section to provide additional/larger separation spacing between the at least one rear burner and the at least one front burner. A block insert panel is inserted into the space created between the rear burner section and the extended front burner section.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.