Cordyceps militaris， as a novel food， is rich in water-soluble novel carotenoids. The aim of this study is to screen a safe solvent for extracting novel carotenoids from C. militaris fruiting bodies and a method of cell breakage without environmental pollution. The main purpose of this study is to obtain the optimum extraction conditions of C. militaris novel carotenoids. With the yield of carotenoids as the index， seven different solvents were used to extract carotenoids from C. militaris fruiting bodies， and the ethanol solution was determined as the optimum extraction solvent. Carotenoids were extracted by ultrasonic fragmentation method and thermal-acid method respectively， and it was confirmed that the ultrasonic fragmentation method was more conducive to the extraction of carotenoids than the thermal-acid method. Based on the single factor experiment， ethanol concentration， extraction time， and extraction temperature were taken as independent variables. The Box-Behnken design was used to establish the regression model. The optimum extraction coniditions of C. militaris novel carotenoids were obtained as follows： ethanol volume fraction of 73.4%， extraction time of 30.4 min， and extraction temperature of 54.4 ℃. Under optimal conditions， the predicted yield of carotenoids was 2 969.23 μg/g， and the experimental yield of carotenoids was 3 017.31 μg/g. There was no significant difference between the RSM-predicted yield and the experimental yield of carotenoids， and the regression model was well fitted.