Akşam ıspanak ve brokoli haşlayıp üzerine yoğurt koyacağız.

Here akşam most naturally means this evening / tonight.

Turkish often uses akşam without a preposition-like word. So:

• Akşam geleceğim. = I’ll come tonight / in the evening.
• Akşam yemek yapacağız. = We’ll cook dinner tonight.

In this sentence, Akşam ıspanak ve brokoli haşlayıp üzerine yoğurt koyacağız, the idea is:

• Tonight, we’ll boil spinach and broccoli and put yogurt on top.

So akşam sets the time for the whole sentence.

In Turkish, food items and many general nouns are often left in the singular when English might also leave them uncountable or treat them as ingredients.

So:

• ıspanak = spinach
• brokoli = broccoli

These are being used as ingredients, not as countable individual objects. Turkish does not need plurals here.

Compare:

• Elma yedim. = I ate apples / an apple
  (depends on context)
• Akşam brokoli yapacağız. = We’ll make broccoli tonight.

If you said ıspanaklar or brokoliler, it would sound unusual in this context.

Because they are not marked as specific direct objects here.

In Turkish, the accusative ending (-ı, -i, -u, -ü) is usually used for a definite/specific direct object.

Compare:

• Ispanak haşlayacağız. = We’ll boil spinach.
  (some spinach, spinach in general)
• Ispanağı haşlayacağız. = We’ll boil the spinach.
  (specific spinach)

In your sentence:

• ıspanak ve brokoli haşlayıp...

the speaker is talking about the meal in a general way, so the bare nouns are natural.

If the speaker meant some specific spinach and broccoli already known to both people, they might say:

• Ispanağı ve brokoliyi haşlayıp üzerine yoğurt koyacağız.

Haşlayıp comes from the verb haşlamak, which means to boil.

It is made of:

• haşla- = boil
• -yıp / -ıp = a linking ending meaning something like and, after, or by doing

So haşlayıp means:

• boiling and...
• after boiling...
• boil ... and then...

In smooth English, the whole sentence becomes:

• We’ll boil spinach and broccoli and put yogurt on top.

This -ıp / -ip / -up / -üp form is very common in Turkish for linking actions.

Examples:

• Eve gidip uyudum. = I went home and slept.
• Çay yapıp getirdi. = She made tea and brought it.

Because Turkish often links consecutive actions with the -ıp / -ip / -up / -üp form instead of repeating full tense marking on each verb.

So instead of saying:

• Akşam ıspanak ve brokoli haşlayacağız ve üzerine yoğurt koyacağız.

Turkish can make it more compact:

• Akşam ıspanak ve brokoli haşlayıp üzerine yoğurt koyacağız.

Both are understandable, but the -ıp version is very natural and smooth.

A good way to think of it is:

• first action: haşlayıp = boil and then
• main tense/action: koyacağız = we will put

The final verb usually carries the tense for the whole sequence.

Üzerine means onto it, on top of it, or over it.

It comes from:

• üzeri = its top / surface
• -ne = to / onto

So üzerine yoğurt koyacağız means:

• we will put yogurt on top
• more naturally, we’ll put yogurt over it/them

In this sentence, üzerine refers to the boiled spinach and broccoli.

Turkish often leaves that reference implicit because it is already clear from context.

You may also hear üstüne, which is a very common everyday variant:

• üzerine yoğurt koyacağız
• üstüne yoğurt koyacağız

Both mean roughly the same thing here.

Because Turkish often treats a combined food dish as one whole thing in context.

Even though there are two ingredients, ıspanak ve brokoli together function as the dish being prepared. So üzerine is completely natural.

English does something similar sometimes:

• We boiled spinach and broccoli and put yogurt on top.

We do not always say on top of them either, because the whole dish is understood.

If you wanted to make the plural more explicit in Turkish, you could restructure the sentence, but the original is very natural.

Koyacağız means we will put.

It comes from the verb koymak = to put / to place.

Breakdown:

• koy- = put
• -acağız / -eceğiz = future tense will
• implied subject: we

So:

• koyacağım = I will put
• koyacaksın = you will put
• koyacak = he/she/it will put
• koyacağız = we will put

Why -acağız and not -eceğiz?
Because of vowel harmony and the shape of the stem.

So in this sentence:

• yoğurt koyacağız = we will put yogurt

In Turkish, subject pronouns are often omitted because the verb ending already shows the subject.

Here:

• koyacağız already means we will put

So biz is unnecessary unless you want emphasis.

Compare:

• Koyacağız. = We will put it.
• Biz koyacağız. = We will put it.
  (with emphasis on we)

That is why the sentence does not need biz.

The given word order is natural, but Turkish word order is somewhat flexible.

The neutral order here is:

• Akşam = time
• ıspanak ve brokoli haşlayıp = first action
• üzerine yoğurt = what goes on top
• koyacağız = final verb

A very natural translation of the structure is:

• Tonight, boiling spinach and broccoli, we’ll put yogurt on top.
• More idiomatically: Tonight we’ll boil spinach and broccoli and put yogurt on top.

You could move parts around for emphasis. For example:

• Üzerine yoğurt koyacağız akşam, ıspanak ve brokoli haşlayıp.

But that sounds marked or conversational. For learners, the original sentence is the best model.

Yes. Although koymak literally means to put, in cooking it is often very natural to translate it as:

• put
• add
• top with

So:

• üzerine yoğurt koyacağız

could be translated as:

• we’ll put yogurt on top
• we’ll add yogurt on top
• we’ll top it with yogurt

The exact English choice depends on style, but koymak itself is the normal Turkish verb here.

These are very common pronunciation questions for English speakers.

1. ı

The Turkish ı is not the same as English i.

• i sounds like the vowel in machine or see
• ı is a deeper, central vowel with no exact English equivalent

So:

• ıspanak is not ee-spanak
• it is more like uh/spanak with a short, plain vowel

2. ğ

The letter ğ usually does not sound like a strong consonant in modern Turkish. It often:

• lengthens the previous vowel, or
• creates a slight glide

So yoğurt is not pronounced with a hard g sound like yog-gurt.

It is closer to:

• yo-urt
• or a slightly lengthened yoourt

3. Rough pronunciation guide

Very approximately:

• akşam ≈ ahk-sham
• ıspanak ≈ uhs-pah-nak
• brokoli ≈ bro-ko-lee
• haşlayıp ≈ hash-lah-yuhp
• üzerine ≈ ue-ze-ri-ne
• yoğurt ≈ yo-urt
• koyacağız ≈ ko-ya-ja-uz
  (very approximate)

A teacher or audio source is best for mastering these sounds, especially ı, ü, and ğ.

Yes. This sounds very natural in Turkish food language.

In Turkish cooking, yoğurt is commonly served:

• on top of vegetables
• with boiled or cooked dishes
• as a sauce-like topping

So the sentence does not sound strange at all. It describes a very typical kind of preparation:

• boil vegetables
• add yogurt on top

That is one reason üzerine yoğurt koyacağız feels so natural in Turkish.