Lactase (β-galactosidase) is a commercially important enzyme that is used extensively in the food and pharmaceutical industries due to its capability to hydrolyze lactose. Because there is a significant market nowadays for lactose-free milk and dairy products, effective cell extraction techniques are a vital part of any industrial production line to help to meet this demand. In the present study, chemical (chloroform and toluene:acetone) and mechanical (bead-beater and sonication) techniques were used to determine the maximum recovery of lactase from 3 strains of L. bulgaricus. Among all extraction techniques, sonication-assisted extraction yielded the highest amount of enzyme (between 1847 and 2156 Miller Units). Interestingly, both solvent extracted lactase activities were found to be very low and not significantly different (P > 0.05) compared with the enzymes in the supernatant of unlysed cells (control). This result would indicate that the use of solvents is not an appropriate method for enzyme recovery. The SDS-PAGE and total protein determination also revealed that mechanical methods can completely lyse the cells, thereby releasing total protein ranging between 116 and 157 µg/mL into the supernatant. Our results thus demonstrated that the mechanical extraction technique, sonication, is the best method to recover the maximum amount of lactase from L. bulgaricus strains.