The ones my mom served, and the ones I bought in cans were very smooth. I do not remember ever seeing my mother cooking them, but they were probably prepared from dried beans.
I believe way more than 75% of the canned food she served us, she canned herself.
Cooking dried beans for 3 hours is probably not enough, but would be no problem for me. I cook my dry pinto beans on low in my crock pot for 10-12 hours, then add ham, onion, and pepper, then cook for another 6-8 hours when I make my ham and beans.
I never frequent fast food restaurants for ham and beans. And, I am pretty sure the last time I ate a butter-bean, it came out of a can.
Sometimes I see something in a grocery store I just want to eat that is way more trouble to cook from scratch than I want to endure.
Such as pizzas, hominy, Vienna sausages, sardines, peas, fruit (except strawberries), celery, head lettuce, and any shelled bean.
I grow my own, and almost never buy them in a grocery: tomatoes, peppers, corn, radishes, asparagus, melons, onions, cucumbers, carrots, beets, pumpkins, green beans, strawberries, cabbage, Brussels sprouts.
If I can't grow it in my garden year round, I just eat it in season, except for peppers and corn, which I freeze, and onions which I can store all winter and spring, and tomatoes, radishes, beets, carrots, cabbages,lettuce, spinach and Brussels sprouts, which I can grow in my greenhouse all winter.