Je vais faire cuire les épinards avec les pommes de terre.

This is the near future in French:

• je vais = I am going
• followed by an infinitive = to ...

So:

• Je vais faire cuire = I am going to cook

French often uses aller + infinitive the way English uses to be going to + verb.

Examples:

• Je vais manger. = I’m going to eat.
• Nous allons partir. = We’re going to leave.

In your sentence, the infinitive part is faire cuire.

Faire cuire is a very common way to say to cook something by heating it.

So:

• faire cuire les épinards = to cook the spinach

Literally, faire cuire looks like make cook, but in normal French it often simply means cook.

You can sometimes see cuire by itself, but faire cuire is extremely common and often sounds more natural for preparing food.

Compare:

• Je fais cuire des pommes de terre. = I’m cooking potatoes.
• Le gâteau cuit au four. = The cake is baking / cooking in the oven.

A useful way to think about it:

• cuire often focuses on the food cooking
• faire cuire often focuses on someone cooking it

Not necessarily.

French faire + infinitive often does mean make/have someone do something, but with cooking expressions like faire cuire, it is very often just the normal way to say cook.

So in this sentence:

• Je vais faire cuire les épinards...

the most natural meaning is simply:

• I’m going to cook the spinach...

It does not automatically imply that someone else will do the cooking.

If French wanted to make that idea clearer, it would usually mention the other person:

• Je vais faire cuire les épinards par le chef. (less common style)
• more naturally: Je vais demander au chef de faire cuire les épinards. = I’m going to ask the chef to cook the spinach.

French usually uses an article where English often does not.

So French says:

• les épinards
  literally: the spinach

But in English, we often just say:

• spinach

This is very normal in French. When talking about food, categories, or things in a general but concrete way, French often keeps the article.

Examples:

• J’aime les pommes. = I like apples.
• Je cuisine les légumes. = I cook vegetables.

So les épinards is completely natural.

Yes — that is one of those places where French and English organize words differently.

In French, épinards is normally used in the plural when talking about spinach as food:

• les épinards

Even though English usually treats spinach as an uncountable singular noun, French commonly treats it as plural in this use.

So just learn it as:

• spinach → les épinards

This is similar to how some food words do not match perfectly between the two languages.

Because pommes de terre is the full French expression for potatoes.

Literally, it means:

• apples of the earth

But you should treat it as one fixed expression:

• une pomme de terre = a potato
• des pommes de terre = potatoes
• les pommes de terre = the potatoes

If you say just pommes, that means apples, not potatoes.

Yes, des could be possible in another context.

The difference is roughly this:

• les épinards / les pommes de terre = the spinach / the potatoes
• des épinards / des pommes de terre = some spinach / some potatoes

So:

• Je vais faire cuire les épinards avec les pommes de terre.
  suggests specific spinach and specific potatoes, perhaps the ones already mentioned or understood in context.

If you were introducing them for the first time, you might say:

• Je vais faire cuire des épinards avec des pommes de terre.
  = I’m going to cook some spinach with some potatoes.

Both are grammatical; the choice depends on context.

Yes, most likely.

avec means with, so:

• avec les pommes de terre = with the potatoes

In this sentence, the natural meaning is that the spinach will be cooked together with the potatoes, or at least prepared as part of the same dish.

So the sentence suggests something like:

• I’m going to cook the spinach with the potatoes.

If needed, context would tell you whether they are literally in the same pot/pan or simply served together.

The structure is:

• Je = subject
• vais = near-future helper verb
• faire cuire = infinitive phrase
• les épinards = direct object
• avec les pommes de terre = prepositional phrase

So literally it is:

• I am going to cook the spinach with the potatoes

French word order here is quite close to English:

1. subject
2. verb
3. object
4. with phrase

That makes this sentence relatively straightforward once you know faire cuire.

It may be understood, but Je vais faire cuire... is usually more natural.

For food preparation, French very often prefers faire cuire. Using cuire directly is possible in some cases, but it can sound less idiomatic depending on the context and the speaker.

So for a learner, the safest and most natural choice is:

• faire cuire

Examples:

• Je fais cuire du riz. = I’m cooking rice.
• Elle va faire cuire le poulet. = She’s going to cook the chicken.

A careful pronunciation would be approximately:

Je vais faire cuire les épinards avec les pommes de terre
→ zhuh vay fair kweer lay zay-pee-nar ah-veck lay pom duh tair

A few useful notes:

• Je sounds like zhuh
• vais sounds like vay
• cuire sounds roughly like kweer
• les épinards has a liaison, so you hear lay-zaypinard
• the final s in épinards is normally silent
• the final s in pommes is silent
• terre sounds like tair

A more French-like flow would be:

• Je vais faire cuire lez-épinards avec les pommes de terre.

It is neutral everyday French.

Nothing in it is especially formal or especially casual. It would sound normal in conversation, in a recipe discussion, or in ordinary daily life.

The only thing that changes formality here is Je:

• Je vais... = normal standard French
• In very casual speech, someone might pronounce it more like J’vais..., but that is just spoken contraction, not a different grammar pattern.

So as a learner, this sentence is perfectly natural and standard.