Fully Specified Default Route on Cisco Router

Hi Folks, got a short question about Route Lookups:

I want to configure a static default route to the Upstream Router.

I know if I just specify the outgoing interface for the route, it will lookup the MAC address for every unknown destination it gets, which is bad.

If I specify the next hop IP, it will always use the corresponding MAC as destination for unknown IPs. But this leeds always to a recursive route lookup for the next hop IP..

Will a fully specified static default route definately solve both problems?

Thanks in advance!