How can I declare a dropdown box in a view to set a value to a model in ASP.NET MVC?

I would like to declare a dropdown box in a view in an ASP.NET MVC application, for letting the user select a lookup value. I know how to declare plain text boxes but is there an official helper for declaring dropdown boxes (date time pickers and the rest)?.

I also don't know what structure I should pass to my view for giving the values to the dropdown box. I assume I need both an id and a description.

Finally, how do I pass the selected id from the dropdown box back to my action in the controller?